Catching Up: Friday

It's now Tuesday morning and I'm writing this on the dining room table at my sister's house in San Jose. The past few days have been terribly busy, so busy that I haven't had time to post to let people know what has been happening. Today we're not doing much besides getting caught up on visiting, doing laundry, and doing a little shopping since there are eleven people in the house this week. Fortunately, there's plenty of room for everyone here.

Friday we went to Zion National Park. When we were putting this trip together we included Zion because it was so convenient. We knew we wanted to see Bryce Canyon, but we didn't know much about Zion or what was even there. We were completely overwhelmed with Zion. It's one of the most beautiful places on earth.

From the park entrance to the visitor center is about a 15 mile drive. During this drive you go through a stunningly beautiful series of mountains that have been carved into lines and shaped by water and wind erosion. There are arches in the sides of mouuntains where huge sheets of granite have fallen away due to freezing and thawing. There are two tunnels you drive through on the way in, and the scenery gets more stunning after each one. As Theresa drove the kids and I were oohing and ahing about the views. I shot over 100 pictures from the windows of the moving car as we entered the canyon.

The front of the park, which is the most accessible and the part we toured, is essentially a canyon. Unlike the Grand Canyon or Bryce Canyon, however, at Zion you are viewing the canyon from the bottom up, instead of from the canyon rim. To tour the canyon you get on a shuttle bus. The shuttle busses run every 7 minutes. If you got on a bus and simply rode to the end of the canyon and back it would be a 90 minute ride. There are many stops along the way, however, where you can get off the bus and take a short hike.

We stopped at a couple of these stops. The first was a steep uphill trail to a viewing area for some of the mountains. Another was to a spot where water drips out of the side of a mountain. This water has seeped into the sandstone of the mountain and slowly drains through the porous rock. The hike ends at an undecut bank, where there are plants growing upside down on the rock in the moisture. I can't fully describe it in words, but it's really neat.

At the end of the canyon is the river, and you can hike up the canyon into the "narrows" where the canyon walls come together and you end up hiking up the river itself because the rock walls come together, several hundred feet high. With all the rain we had been having we didn't feel safe hiking this area because of the flash flood danger. The National Park Service makes a big deal about warning you about the danger of floods, and we took them seriously. We spent most of Friday at Zion, and when we left decided this was definitely a place we need to see again.