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September 20 - Drive to Zion National Park
We presented ourselves yet again at the BLM office for the Wave lottery. It was somewhat repetitive as once again we were not chosen.
We packed up to head to Zion. There are two routes to Zion - the one through Arizona is a longer distance but less time. We decided in the interest of scenery to drive through Zion. This turned out to be quite a mistake. We didn't realize that there was a tunnel that the RV had to go through taking up both lanes…..for this pleasure we were charged an extra $15. This caused quite a delay. We did see desert big horn sheep and mule deer on the drive through the park. It was cool to see how agile the sheep were on the big cliffs.
We pulled in to the Willow Wind campground around 3 and we pleasantly surprised as to how nice a campground this is after an attempted trailer break in at Crazy Horse yesterday.
September 21 - Hike to Angel's Landing
Our early start of 5:30 got us to Zion around 7 allowing us to catch one of the first shuttle buses up to Angel's Landing, in order to avoid the anticipated crowds. There was a light misty rain falling when we started but the forecast was for sun all day. Clearly the forecast was for somewhere else as we did not see sun all day. By the time we reached Angel's Landing which is the last ½ mile of the hike, the rain was quite steady and it had become quite cool. Angel's Landing has chains along the trail most of the way but one part very early on was slickrock without chains. A number of people bailed at this point feeling that it was too risky….including Karen. The fall would be several hundred feet. Kevin continued past this point but only went another hundred metres as there was another slickrock area that wasn't quite as dangerous but still quite scary. Returning back to where Karen had stopped, Kevin was quite frightened.
The rain continued to come down and by the time we got to the bottom we were drenched and cold. We had our lunch in the truck and drove in to Springdale for a bit of shopping. We decided to drive through the park again as many of the locals told us that it was beautiful even in the rain.
September 22 - St. George
The forecast for today was pretty dicey, with a chance of showers and thunderstorms all day. There's not much rain here, so we're pretty sure that it's rare to have two days in a row rained out. We had planned for a day in St. George anyway, so today is the day. St. George is pretty much surrounded by low mountains, and almost everything is red. Red cliffs, red sand, red sidewalks, red walls lining some of the roads. And it works…very pretty. We stopped in at the outlet mall, Home Depot, Costco (they only accepted a credit card that we don't have), Camping World and Barnes & Noble.
At the outlet mall, we got tickets for this evening's performance of The Hunchback of Notre Dame at the Tuachan amphitheatre. What an amazing place! It is set deep into the back of a canyon with red, sheer stone cliffs over 100' high. We could see the cliffs at the beginning of the show, but once it got dark, you wouldn't know they were there….until they lit up the cliffs as part of the backdrop at a couple of key points in the show. Jaw dropping!!! We enjoyed the performance very much.
September 23 - Kolob Canyon
The forecast is back to clear today, but still a bit cool. We stopped in at the local bike shop to get a map of the mountain bike trails in the area. We were advised that we needed to choose carefully since many of the trails would be heavy red clay. Our first stop though, was to head 25 km north to the Kolob Canyon, the northernmost region of Zion. We did a 5 mile scenic drive through the canyon which was not very long but still amazing rock formations.
The bike ride that was suggested to us by the bike shop was called Prospector and it was reasonable flat but twisty and some short up and downs. There weren't many trees or rocks, just shrubs. One part when along the edge of a cliff and we were on that for a short time until we decided we would be safer on a different trail.
September 24 - Hike to Emerald Pools & the Narrows
We got up fairly early to hike the Narrows at the end of Zion canyon. After speaking with the Park Ranger we realized that the water was going to be 12 C and would be up to our waist. Since the air temperature was only 9 C, we decided to do the Emerald Pools hike first. There are no cars allowed on the canyon drive but there is an excellent shuttle service running very few minutes, stopping at 9 different points along the way. We got off at stop 6 and did the Emerald pools hike. It was fairly strenuous with lots of rocks/stairs to climb. Through most of the trail you could hear the water flowing down the rock walls. We stopped first at the middle pool, then hiked up to the upper pool. The upper pool featured a waterfall which didn't have much water but was coming from about 1,000 ft above us. We went back down the middle pool again and down to the lower pool. This was very cool. You walked behind the waterfall to pass it. The waterfall was at least 100 ft over our heads. We continued down river back to Shuttle stop 5. Just as we were getting to the stop we saw a number of mule deer. Even though there were dozens of people on the trail, the deer were no more than 15 ft off the trail, completely unfazed by the people.
We hopped back on the shuttle and went up to Stop 9 with numerous others. Many had rented neoprene shoes, socks and some had even rented dry pants. We walked a little over a mile to where the canyon started to narrow significantly. It was at this point that you would need to walk in the river to continue any further. We enjoyed walking right beside the river on the way back.
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