Once we arrived at our campground, about 10 miles outside of Zion, we were thrilled to discover that not only did we have a delightful location but we had a nice little river running behind our campsite. This was great news for Stella who immediately began running through the water like a little kid. When we drove into Zion Canyon National Park for the first time we started our visit off by taking a 20 mile drive along the Zion Mount Carmel Highway. This trip gave us our first look at Zion with some spectacular vistas and a drive through a historic one mile tunnel, cut through the solid sandstone. The next couple of days we had some wet and cloudy weather so we enjoyed walking around the town of Springdale, a quaint tourist community. There we shopped among the souvenir shops and discovered a great little candy store where they made fresh candy and where we each enjoyed some of our favorites. After a couple of days the sunshine reappeared so we returned to the park to discover some new areas. We spent an afternoon taking a nice hike along the Virgin River. It was a flat trail where we could look up into the canyons and saw many great views. After our hike we enjoyed a great lunch at a local spot named Wildcat Willies where I was able to indulge in a beer sampler platter of 4 different 5 ounce beers for only $5. I just couldn’t resist. Since we were visiting during the Memorial Day weekend, we decided to wait to return to the main part of the park until Monday afternoon when the crowds started to thin. Instead, we took a ride to a more remote area, the most northern portion of Zion, Kolob Canyon where we stopped and enjoyed many overlooks before taking a nice hike to the Kolob Canyon Viewpoint. The weather at this point had also turned very nice so we returned later in the day to take another hike along the Virgin River but this time we took Stella and of course she loved it. There’s nothing like a river and some fresh air for her to really enjoy herself. We saved the best for last by getting an early start on our final day and took the shuttle bus through the entire canyon. The shuttle buses allowed us to get on and off along the way and we were able to take several short hikes before our final much longer and difficult one. We enjoyed some magnificent views at many of the stops as well as along the bus route itself. The shorter hikes took us into some beautiful wooded areas with water streaming out of the mountains in a tropical rainforest type of environment and along a beautiful section of the Virgin River that we hadn’t seen before. Our longer hike required a lot more climbing and covered over 5 miles. This final hike took us to several pools of water, all created by dripping water from higher elevations. There was a lot more climbing across some very uneven terrain that we didn’t expect so we were definitely tired by the time we returned but as always, very happy were took the time to do it. After visiting Zion, we became even more excited about what was still in store for us in Utah and Colorado.
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