Zion National Park

After booking our Las Vegas vacation, I began researching day trips and Zion was without a doubt #1 my list. It's a 3-hour drive from Vegas but Chris and I are pros when it comes to cramming as much into a day as possible. (I learned this necessary skill when I backpacked across Europe and it comes in handy on cruises too.) On Thursday morning, we woke up early and jumped in the car to begin our trek. Chris was a little unhappy with me for snoozing during the drive!

We entered the park and within minutes we were entering the mouth of Zion Canyon. It was love at first sight. My first thought was "why the hell did it take me this long to come here?" The sky was so blue and the jagged rocks and cliffs were so red. The only thing that would have made the area more stunning would be to see it in summer when the trees have leaves. When they built the roads there, they obviously took advantage of the available resources because the pavement was red.

We checked the visitor's center for trail information and discovered that most of the trails had some degree of snow/ice. Which we expected. The plan was to tackle the 8-mile Observation Point trail. My feet were sore from the previous day so we decided to head to the Riverside Walk (Gateway to the Narrows) first. It's an easy 2 miles and I figured it would be a good warm-up for my poor feet. We ran into some ice toward the end of the trail and turned back. My feet were feeling better so we headed to the Observation Point trailhead to get started on our 8-miler. And we ran into nothing but ICE at the trailhead! There was only one car parked there and from the footprints, it was obvious the hiker was using crampons. Disappointed, we pulled out our map and decided to do a couple of shorter hikes instead.

We headed to the Emerald Pools trailhead and began the ascent. There are three pools on this trail. The lower and middle are easy hikes, and the upper is more strenuous. Honestly, the pools themselves aren't anything to write home about. But the trail itself was amazing with all the great canyon views.

We hopped back into the car and drove around for a while. We'd stop on occasion to take a picture. Lucky for us, the park was empty so Chris was able to easily stop when I'd exclaim "oooh, oooh, oooh, oooh, STOP! Picture!" I'm so glad that he humors me.

I was annoyed with our lack of mileage, so I pulled out the map and informed Chris that I wanted to do another hike. We decided on the Watchman Trail, which would give us another 3 miles. To our tired bodies, it felt much longer than 3 miles and much steeper than the map claimed. But the end result was worth it and we spent a little while enjoying the view from the top.

We ended the day with 7+ miles and 150 pictures. The drive back to Vegas was nice and we slept well that night.