Today was our only full day at Zion and we intended it to be full. We started out bright and early
Our first stop was the our hike to Angels Landing, this was a 5.4 mile round trip hike. This hike is the staple of this park. You gradually incline up, even out a bit, then hit numerous switch backs.
This is where we were headed!
Once you do the switch backs, the real fun starts. The last .5 mile of this trail is up a sheer cliff using cables and foot holds. I didn't even look back and just started scurrying up. But then about 100 feet into it, I realized that this was stupid and not worth it! It would be one thing if we were the only ones out there hiking. But you have people coming down the trail (hanging off the cables trying to go two ways on the one way trail!), you also have people in flip flops and vans slipping and sliding everywhere. I found a great place to sit and encouraged Rob to go on and take some good pictures!
Rob scurried up ahead. This was the view he was afforded.
In the second picture you can squint and see the chains and people going up this last part of the hike. Rob also came to his senses and decided to turn around!
We descended the trail much faster then hiked up. We saw some wildlife as we hiked down as well.
And we got a big treat after our stressful hike
After our break we headed to the Narrows. This was the Narrows the day before....
It was not raining at this point, so we tried to fit the Narrows in when we could. The Narrows is a really cool unique hike. It is a hike in the river between two cliffs. Normally you would zig zag back and forth the river between the dry banks on the sides. I believe normally it is a pretty clear river that you can see and walk through. To get to the entrance to the Narrows you have to go on about a .5 mile hike.
As we took this picture the rain started coming and the familiar boooooms of the thunder could be heard. We continued on, picked a stick from the wall of sticks, and jumped in..... brrrr it was cold!!
The hike is about 5 miles or what we planned to do, but with the weather and the thunder and lighting, we decided not to go too far as there were warnings about flash flooding everywhere. Also it was really really hard to hike in the river since it was pure mud, you could not see where you were stepping or what you were stepping on. If the weather was good, I would highly recommend this hike, I was very hesitant about it, but hopefully we will return some day (in good weather) and be able to hike further up. No additional equipment was needed, I did the hike in my Keen boots.
By the time we were done the rain was really coming down, on our way out, I had to get a picture of this sign...
It is a little hard to see what it says... but it says there are three signs of a flash flood 1) Buildup of clouds and thunder, 2) Roar if water from up-canyon, and 3) suddenly muddy water, floating debris or rising water levels.... how lucky are we, we experienced all three... but so lucky we didn't actually experience a flash flood (yet)
We climbed on the tram in the pouring rain to go back to the airstream. As we are driving down the canyon we realize that the river is really really high. We get back to the airstream and we see this...
The river is rushing AND our "perfect" campsite is now flooding! Oh well. We love the rain when we are tucked inside our warm and cozy trailer! We take nice long HOT showers and get all cleaned up! We make a quick trip to the grocery store and pick up some essentials. Then we come back and get dressed up, because we were going to the lodge for dinner. I thought this would be so perfect, a raging fire, a beautiful lodge in the woods, pouring rain! We RUN over to the tram station at the visitor center, and rush onto the bus excited for the warm shelter. And the bus driver says.... "You are welcome to come on board, but we are not going any where, the roads are washed out and closed, no idea when they will open" DANG.. this was our only night for the lodge! I was so disappointed. We went back to the AS and got in the FJ and drove around to check out the park! The river was really raging. When we came back we asked the ranger if we should really worry about the campsite flooding. She said in all of her years working at the park they have never had to evacuate. I wasn't even thinking about evacuation! I was like... maybe we should hook up just incase, what if we can't get it hooked up when we really need to! Rob said everything was ok, and we didn't need to do that! We went back and he made an amazing dinner with our pick ups from the grocery store. We played some more monopoly and watched some TV on the iPad.
