No Thru Traffic

We awoke from our slumber at another awesome KOA in Fillmore really early to try and make it to Zion in time to get a first-come, first-served camping spot. But as is typical of my packing, it took me an hour to put the mountain of crap back onto my bike. After another terrible freeway bout, we made it to Zion before 11:00 and secured our spot regardless.

On the first day I made Ryan hike up Angel’s Landing with me – something that I wanted to do last time I was in Zion but never got around to it. I was reminded quickly just how incredible my physical condition is. Luckily I could blame my slow pace on my knee rather than my lung capacity. Ryan also has a bum knee from twisting it while hiking in Glacier – it still hasn’t gotten much better. On top of our pathetic ails, we chose to start the hike during the coolest part of the day – about 1:30. It was over 100 degrees and miserable.

But the views and experience more than made up for it. After making it to Scout’s Lookout after traversing the terrible Walter’s Wiggles switchbacks, we were faced with the last half mile of the trek – the part of the hike that requires you cling to metal chains drilled into the cliff or face certain death. Alright, it wasn’t that bad, but there were times when you would have to hold on with both hands and traverse a 3-4 foot wide path with a 1,200 foot drop on one side, and a 900 foot drop on the other.

It was exhilarating.

After the hike we cooled our bums by sitting in the river and watching a nice fat english bull dog pee up stream of us. She looked like Winston Churchill.

Tired of noodles and sauce, we decided to literally spice things up a bit and but all the fixin’s for making mini burritos – tortillas, refried beans, sour cream, hot sauce, cheese, onion, green peppers. They were an awesome relief from the normal dinner, albeit a bit more expensive.

That night we were lucky to have a strong wind blow to cool us off in our tent. With lows of 72 degrees happening at 6:00am though, there was little relief from the heat. Even the water that came from the one community spicket was warm. I miss ice water, for sure.

Our second day was spent sleeping in and heading to the Narrows to hike up the Virgin River into one of the most spectacular parts of the park. Ryan found a pair of aqua socks while rummaging through the dumpster, and I was the sucker who paid money to rent the moon-boot esque shoes peddled by the local merchants. I ended up to be better equipped though as Ryan’s feet were pretty bruised by the end of the day.

The river was a nice relief from the heat and roughly 2 miles we hiked upstream then back out took most of the day.

We feasted on another mexican meal that night and missed the wind from the night before as it was nearly impossible to sleep in the heat.

In all, I think that Zion is one of the most beautiful places I’ve been. The two hikes we did were spectacular and a lot of fun. I just wish that the campsite had showers…