Travel Recap #11: Zion and Bryce

 

"If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere." 

~ Laura Ingalls Wilder ~

In addition to our great day trip to the Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park in southern Utah, we found a couple other lesser-known (but super cool) spots not far outside Zion. The first just sounded too Middle Earth not to stop: The Belly of the Dragon. Originally dug as a large drainage tunnel under Hwy 89, this sandstone “cave” was long enough to appear pitch black and foreboding at the outset, but short enough to make do without a flashlight on a sunny day. There was about a quarter mile hike that dead-ended on the other side, so we got to come back through the massive tunnel, which did have the eerie resemblance of an oversized digestive tract. 

The other worth-the-stop spot just off the highway north of Kanab was the Sand Caves (also called the Moqui Caverns). To access them, we pulled off at a parking lot that seemingly had no purpose, then hiked around a curve between the highway and a cliff face, on sandy, meandering paths lined with brush and trees. We came to a steeply-sloped slickrock hill, which we had to climb and traverse in order to reach the mouth of the caves. The inside was really neat, with several “rooms” and a few large window-like openings to the outer edge (with sheer drop-offs.. of course) and a fun mini-doorway for the kids to play around. Not to mention, the sand was very soft and made the whole cave like a cozy covered sandbox. Very near to the Sand Caves parking lot was also a wide open public shooting range (no one was there at the time), which we would have planned to utilize had we known it was there. Thank you, Utah!

We tackled Zion National Park the very next day, and boy was it a treasure! A winding road took us through increasingly large hills marbled with white and red and scattered with greenery, and through the more-than-a-mile-long Zion-Mount Carmel Tunnel. A switchback road on the other side was filled with sweeping views of mountains and canyons. It seemed like there was no way all of this could be out here “in the desert.” Unfortunately, not a single photo we took did justice to the natural beauty we found there. 

We started at the Visitor Center, oriented ourselves to the park and shuttle bus system, picked up the customary Junior Ranger packets, then set off on the next shuttle headed north. The full bus ride to the Temple of Sinawava stop at the end took about 45 minutes and made around 7 stops. We got off at the last stop and hiked the Riverside Walk to the beginning of the Narrows, which was a pretty walk along the Virgin River at the base of high cliff walls. We saw a handful of deer in the meadows and wished we could continue on, but, alas, not with kids. We saw several groups pass by wearing chest-high waders and special insulated boots, carrying backpacks and walking sticks; we apparently didn’t get the memo that the Narrows requires much more planning and preparation than a typical hike. The majority of it involves wading through the River, which in some places can be neck-high or more on an average-sized adult, and the full “hike” through the gorge to Big Spring and back (nearly 10 miles total) can take all day. We ran into one group that said they had spent over 5 hours in the Narrows the day before. Wow! Now that we know, it’s definitely a Bucket List item for Justin and me to return for someday. 

We got on the Shuttle heading back toward the Visitor Center and stopped next at The Grotto, taking the trail to the Emerald Pools, which was another 2+ miles to the Lower and Middle sections. (We didn’t press the kids to continue to the Upper Pool since they were pretty much at their limits: 4.5 miles in a day is a lot for littles!) The kids splashed in the streams a bit and we survived the “somewhat dodgy” path with occasional drop-offs both up and back again, so I consider it a successful trip. We did see the trailhead for Angels Landing (which requires a permit to hike), but as amazing as I’m sure the views are from up there, that just doesn’t happen to be one of the trails I feel the urge to hike in my lifetime. A thousand foot drop-offs just don’t get me going. But if heights are your jam, well, you'll find 'em there!

We jumped off the shuttle once more and made a quick run up to the Court of the Patriarchs viewpoint to get a good photo of the peaks named for Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob before returning to the Visitor Center. That’s where we ran into our friends that we had met at the Getaway in Idaho a month before - what a neat surprise and a great way to end a fun and exhausting day on a high note!

The next day (yes, we move quickly, people) we made the drive up to a boondocking spot outside of Bryce Canyon National Park, where we could just start to see the infamous red-orange hoodoos jutting up from the nearby hills. We rode our bikes, took a little drive, had a good meal and called it a night. 

Our visit to Bryce the following morning took us first up to Inspiration Point for the best overview of the Canyon. Hundreds of jutting orange hoodoos stood below and we couldn’t wait to explore more. It was recommended that we should do the loop starting at Sunset Point, hiking down and around back up to Sunrise, but the parking lot was overflowing so we backtracked to Sunrise and began our 3+ mile hike into the Canyon from there (I suppose it makes more sense to go from Sunrise to Sunset anyway… ) This fantastic loop took us on a wonderfully scenic and immersive trip through the highlights of the Canyon via the Navajo Loop Trail and the Queens Garden Trails. It was a beautifully varied hike from white-colored paths that slowly descended past great hoodoo heads, down into a winding trail among trees and dry riverbeds, through rock doorways into the Queens Garden, and finally up the endless, orange switchback trail known as Wall Street back to Sunset Point and along the paved Rim Trail to our starting point. Although the final climb was no joke, especially while toting a large toddler and herding the others like reluctant sheep, the views were spectacular and the experience was one for the books. This definitely goes down as one of my all-time favorite hikes!