Saturday, March 24, 2018

Today was more or less a free day for us to do what we wanted. The consensus was for us to return to Zion National Park since we’d felt like we hadn’t seen as much of it as we’d liked on our first visit. So that’s what we did.

We stopped by Terry’s Food & Drug in Orderville for our last visit to pick up groceries and we were on our way. Our plan was to see what we could see before returning to the Mt. Carmel Junction area for dinner since we had a long drive into Flagstaff AZ the next morning.

We got to the park, parked the car, and took the shuttle to Stop 7 for our first hike at Weeping Rock. This hike was a little less than exciting – a 0.8 mile round trip hike to a timid little waterfall.

Lucky for us there was another hike there to Hidden Canyon. This one was a 1-mile one-way hike (so far so good) that ended up pretty much straight up (yikes). This one was a tough one for me. There were a couple of times I caught myself thinking “I should have never given up running” and “I suppose this would be a good way to go.”

But when we got to the top the view was incredible. There was actually some more uphill trail that Zach and Eli took and the rest of us took a pass on, just sitting and enjoying the view. Back down the trail was a whole lot better than going up.

We took the shuttle back to the van for lunch and then returned on the shuttle to Stop 9, the River Walk Trail. This was another trail that Sonya and I had taken on our honeymoon. But back in 2000 we took the trail on into The Narrows where the paved trail ends into the stream and into a continuously narrowing canyon. Because of the recent weather and the relatively cold temperatures it was closed.

Sonya and I were able to recreate some of the pictures from our honeymoon as well. Which was fun but also frustrating since there were so many people on the trail that day.

The kids liked the trail as well. At the end they took a little time stacking up rocks in the stream. Lots of laughs. We all had all great time.

Time to leave. On the way out of the park we got stopped at the Zion Tunnel, which is not tall enough in its center to allow for two-way traffic when a tall RV is passing through. It was okay. It gave us a chance to take in the view.

For dinner there wasn’t much of a choice. So it was back to The Thunderbird where we hadn’t had a very good experience earlier in the week. Since we knew what we were getting into, we played it safe with burgers pretty much all all round. We even had desserts this time!

Back to the ranch for an early retirement.