Miles Travelled: 3,168
Miles Hiked: 41.1
Current Location: Virgin, UT
After snow in Canon City, hail at Black Canyon and rain in the desert our bad weather luck has finally broken. Today is mid-80s and very sunny. We did not think we were headed that way during the drive from Arches to Zion National Park. Kansas is still the most boring drive but this one was the most desolate. When I asked someone at the tourism office for directions to Zion National Park they said "Make sure your gas tank is full when you leave, there is a 100 + mile stretch on I-70 with absolutely nothing". They were not exaggerating. We drove 100 miles and I would estimate that we saw less than 20 cars during that time and zero buildings.
When we got near the park we found that every hotel / motel was full. We eventually had to drive to the next town over to get a room. At that point we were not feeling good about finding an open campsite the next day but we found an absolute goldmine at a place called Zion River Resort in Virgin, Utah. This campground is nicer than some of the hotels we have stayed at. We set up the tent and headed to the park.
Zion is like Arches in terms of the geological features but it also has a lot of trees and other foliage as you can see in this landscape shot which has some green in it.
We did a relatively easy 4 mile hike to something called the Emerald Pools. The hike takes you to three pools, lower, middle and upper. The middle pool was pretty boring but the upper pool was great as it featured this high waterfall.
From there we took a trail down to the lower pool. Here we are at one of the over-hangs on our way down the trail.
The best part of the lower pool was that you could walk behind the small waterfall falling from the middle pool above.
We ended the night with hog dogs and canned corn cooked over the campfire. We have become very proficient with our set up and breakdown of camp and also with our campfire cooking. We have been through some trying times on this trip but nothing has fazed us so far. Of course it is easy to keep a happy face on when you are having dinner in perfect weather with views like this on from our picnic table.
Click here for the full Zion Day 1 photo album
