Tuna
Thursday 18 April 2024
Utah, I love you! My favourite state so far.
We headed off to Zion National Park today. One of the recommendations from the lovely Krista, she’s been on the money with everything so far.
Unfortunately, the drive there wasn’t so good as I got stuck behind a RV for 30mins and it wasn’t doing the nice thing of pulling over and letting the line of traffic past (2 cars).
Having done a little bit of research (read the Zion NP website), it was good we were heading in the east entrance as the queue in should be a little shorter and there were also lots of view points before you got to the village. However, as it is now coming out of winter and into peak season, they have shut the scenic route out to the end and have implemented shuttle buses. So as no one could drive out, everyone had to park and parking spaces were at a premium. The signs on the way in said that parking was full and we would need to park in Springdale which is outside of the south entrance to the NP. A quick chat and a decision was made, if we couldn’t find a parking spot we would just cruise on back out the road to the east entrance and stop and all the road side scenic spots. However, we were lucky and scored the last parking spot at the museum car park. I also parallel parked the Honda Pilot beast in one go (I did have a little bit of help from the Albatross to make sure I didn’t bump the car behind or in front). So, parking sorted we jumped on the shuttle bus and headed out and decided to go to the end (Tempe of Sinawava) and then stop off along the way back.
As we were on a bus, we didn’t really get to see much as it was packed. Once at the end we did a short walk to the little river, which was wending its way through the valley with massive rocks. There isn’t much along the shuttle bus route if you aren’t going to go for a trail walk or two or three. However, most of the trail walks involved a reasonable amount of up, and as we are both rather unfit it wasn’t on the books for us. On the bus trip back to the car we were able to choose our seats to get the best views of the valley.
On the way out of the NP we stopped at all the scenic views and they were amazing. We were also lucky to see a few Californian Condors circling around whilst we ate lunch. In hindsight, I think that the road from the Village to the east entrance is what is worth doing, rather than the shuttle bus up the scenic drive.
This is a stunning place and we were both blown away with the beauty of what we were seeing. Here is another ridiculous number of photos.
