Today we were up and on the road by 8 heading to Zion National Park. Zion is an important place in the folklore of the Gorn Page here at Club Josh. Back in 1992, my friends went camping in Zion and I was unable to go due to my job (or some other lame excuse) so they took the Gorn with them to Zion and the rest is history. Its one of the only places in the world that the Gorn had been without me and finally it was my turn to visit.
We made it to the park around 930 and thankful it wasn’t that crowded yet. Our destination was the Riverside Walk and the Narrows Canyon trail up the Virgin River. As always we missed out on hiking to the amazing views on the sides of the canyon, but we will just add it to the next time list. Like the other trails we had been on this trip, this one was fairly easy to navigate. It did seem that the park was filling up quickly, but we had parked the car at the visitor center and took the bus up to the trailhead.
The path was easy and scenic and not full of too many people with strollers, but there were some for sure. We made it to the start of the Narrows and we were noticing all of the warnings but pressed ahead. We had been watching the weather and didn’t see any flash flooding or heavy rain in the forecast so we felt comfortable going down the trail. Trail is a bit generous as you are actually walking up the river in the canyon. Despite not being a fan of getting my shoes wet, I was glad I had them on since I didn’t bring any water shoes. The downside is that I also didn’t bring a change of shoes, but that is a problem for later today.
A great time was had by all in the Narrows and we didn’t go too far down before heading back. Just enough to get to a wider section of the Narrows where you could actually get out of the river. We made it back to the bus and then the car sloshing all the way and was ready to hit the road by 1pm. Lunch was at the In-N-Out Burger in Washington, UT just outside of St George. after wringing out my shoes and socks a bit more we were back on the road home.
The rest of the day was in the car on the way home to Orange County. We passed back through Arizona and Nevada before getting to Las Vegas. We managed just a gas stop in Vegas and then back on the road home. Sunset was over the Mohave Desert and we were thankful traffic wasn’t too bad. Around 8pm we trudged into town and dropped off Daniel’s Mom before heading home.
We really did cover a lot in these 4 days, especially considering that most of the days were spent driving. I think if I was to do it again, I would have had an extra day in Moab for more Canyonlands, Dead Horse State Park, and Natural Bridges NM. Perhaps another day near Zion to see more of the park but that’s about it. You can do it all in 4, 5 is probably better but its certainly an itinerary I recommend!
