Saturday - September 8th

Today we drove to Zion National Park and here are a few of my first impressions; 1) Of course it is a beautiful park; 2) The road is the same red color as the canyon walls; 3) there is a mile long tunnel you drive through and when you pop out - Bam! Red and white canyon walls against a blue sky greets you.  4) You park your car and are shuttled throughout the park and 5) There are a ton of people everywhere.  An additional comment I would like to make is that the traffic through the mile long tunnel is one way which means that traffic through the tunnel is alternating northbound and southbound.  We feel we were so special because we were given the baton to hand to the park ranger indicating we were the last car heading southbound and it was time for northbound traffic to have a turn.  The ranger was really cool because she acted just like a runner waiting for the hand off. 

Anyway, Kathy had successfully obtained a hiking permit for Sunday's hike called "The Subway" so we picked it up at the visitor's center.  Of course she had to sign our lives away but more about that later.  The first hike we did was Lower Emerald pool.  By the way - the pool isn't emerald.  The trail is concrete and pretty easy.  Our next hike was River Walk.  Just as the name suggests we walk along the river.  It's shady, cooler and full of squirrels!  There are signs everywhere that say not to feed the wildlife however people must think squirrels are not wildlife.  I never saw a squirrel pose for pictures but the Zion squirrels do.  And they are just a little chubby (the squirrels, not necessarily the photographers).  My apologies for the last squirrel tangent.  At the end of the walk, Kathy and I put on our water shoes and started hiking up the river to look for the Narrows.  We really had no idea how far we needed to walk and with a river full of people, we walked back. 

After taking the shuttle back to the parking lot, Kathy suggested we eat in the town of Springdale which is a stone's throw out of the south entrance of the park.  Springdale is a very quaint town with restaurants, lodging, outfitters and of course little shops.  We had lunch, shopped a bit and bought tickets to see the OmniMax Zion based movie which I declared was the educational portion of our day.  After the movie we drove through the park, exited out of the North entrance and back to Kanab.

When we returned to our room, we plotted our adventure for Sunday - The Subway Hike.  We decided to get up at 5:30 am since the drive to the trailhead was one hour away and we wanted to start around 7:00 am.

Waterfall into Lower Emerald Pool