Zion's Riverside Walk and a Visit to the Patriarchs

This morning was cold and overcast.  We treated ourselves to breakfast at Majestic View Lodge in Springdale, the town just to the south of the entrance to Zion National Park.  We usually eat breakfast in the motorhome, so this was a nice treat for us.  Then we drove to the visitor's center and boarded a shuttle bus headed for Temple of Sinawava.  From there we went on a very popular, easy walk called Riverside Walk.  The paved (but covered in sand in a lot of places) walk took us another mile up the river.  At the beginning of the walk, I took a photo of the bottom part of the waterfall that I posted about the first day we rode the shuttle bus.

Below is a picture of a rock overhang along the path:

And here is the view from the end of the path.  From here, the only hike left to do is The Narrows, which is a hike through the river to get to the narrowest part of Zion Canyon. 

End of the Riverside Walk and beginning of The Narrows, a hike through the river.

Oh rats, we really wanted to hike through the freezing water.  NOT!!

As we retraced our steps to the beginning of Riverside Walk, a friendly person offered to take our picture.

Yes, I am always wearing that white visor and my sunglasses, even when it's not sunny!

We walked back to the Temple of Sinawava shuttle stop and boarded a bus headed back down the canyon. We stopped at Court of the Patriarchs.  Here is a picture of the three patriarchs, which in the 1920s a Methodist minister named Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

From left to right: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob

On today's walk and at Court of the Patriarchs, we saw three different types of native plants.

Swamp land along the river

A lonely wildflower

And a prickly cactus

We came back to the RV park after today's adventures and had planned to go back to Zion this evening to have a nice dinner at Zion Lodge and then attend the park ranger talk at the amphitheater at Watchman Campground.  But as Dave was trying to see why our water pressure was so low, he discovered a water leak.  So right now, we are without any water and need to wait here until a mobile repairman can get here from Hurricane.  Not a good way to end our lovely visit to Zion National Park.  Tomorrow morning, if the water is repaired, our plan is to head for Las Vegas.

Update at 6:30 pm local time:  The repairman was here and replaced an O-ring on the water fitting.  $69 later, we have water!  We missed our dinner at Zion lodge but it's very nice to be able to run water, flush the toilet, take showers, and of course, do laundry again!

Zion National Park--Bike Ride Down the Canyon

Dave loaded our bikes on the front of this shuttle bus.  Each shuttle tows a second shuttle bus, kind of like an articulated bus.  We rode the bus from the visitor's center all the way up the canyon to the last stop, Temple of Sinawava.  Each shuttle holds two bicycles.  Dave unloaded our bikes at this stop and from here we rode all the way back down the canyon.  Most of the ride was downhill, but there were a couple of short uphill parts.  At the end of the ride, back at the main visitor's center, we rode through Watchman Campground because we want to go to a ranger show about astronomy  at the campground tomorrow night.  Altogether we rode 10 miles today. 

Above is a view from the Temple of Sinawava shuttle bus stop, where we started our bike ride.  Below is a picture from the next stop on our ride, Big Bend.

The following stop was Weeping Rock.  We hiked uphill to see this phenomenon.  Water appears to come out of a rock.  You can't see it well in my pictures, but it was a very interesting sight to see.  In the photo below I am standing underneath the ledge where the water comes over.

The following stop on our bike ride down Zion Canyon was at a picnic area called The Grotto.  Below is a picture of the first visitor's center when Zion was a National Monument, not yet a national park.  Back then they had about 11 visitors each day and this small cabin was plenty big enough to handle all the visitors.

By the time we reached Zion Lodge, it was 1:30 pm, so we stopped to have a hot dog at the lodge's outdoor cafe snack bar.  Pictured below is the view from the cafe.

After putting some food into our stomachs, we continued our bike ride down the canyon.  This whole time we have been riding on the one and only road.  When a shuttle bus comes along behind us, we have to stop and move to the side of the road because the buses are not allowed to pass moving bicycles.  The next stop is Canyon Junction, where State Highway 9 turns east to go to the east entrance of the park where the big 1-mile tunnels are.  Click here to read about our drive through the tunnels on Tuesday on our way to and from our day trip to Bryce Canyon National Park.

At Canyon Junction, we were able to leave the highway and ride on a paved bicycle path called Pa'rus, which is the Paiute Indian name for the Virgin River which means "quickly moving water".  From this end of the Pa'rus path, it is 1.7 miles back to the visitor center.

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After bicycling through Watchman Campground near the visitor center, we loaded the bikes back on the car.  Clouds were starting to threaten rain and we were glad that we completed the ten-mile ride without having to worry about rain.

Now in the car again, our final stop for the day was Zion's Museum of Man, where we watched the 22-minute video about Zion.  Usually we like to watch the movies at the beginning of our park experience, but we didn't do that this time, and we enjoyed it even more after seeing in person the sights and history that the movie portrayed.  A picture taken at the Museum shows the clouds threatening rain, and in fact, we got some rain and small hail as we left the museum.

Just as we pulled into our RV park, and as Dave was unloading the bicycles, it started to rain hard and has been raining ever since.  I thawed out New York steaks for dinner tonight, and Dave was planning to grill them, but it looks like I'll need to broil them in the oven instead.  We are glad we are not camping in a tent tonight!

Zion National Park's Emerald Pools Walk

During the night we experienced a thunder and lightning storm.  It occurred around 3 am, so I wasn't awake enough to appreciate it.  The storm passed but left rain.  It was still raining this morning, so we decided to do some errands in the town of Hurricane, Utah, which is about 15 miles from the RV park. 

When we got back to the motorhome, the rain had stopped.  We decided to go into Zion National Park again and do the Lower Emerald Pool walk.  It's a paved trail but had quite a bit of mud on it from the storm.  The walk gains an elevation of 160 feet which we handled pretty well.  The walk is only 1.2 miles roundtrip, but it took us over an hour.  We rode the park shuttle to Zion Lodge where the Emerald Pools walks begin.  There is a lower, a middle, and an upper trail to the pools.  The lower pool is at an elevation of 4500 feet. 

Zion Lodge

The Virgin River

The bridge crossing the Virgin River

The beginning of the path to Lower Emerald Pool.  Note how green everything is after the rainfall.

Our first view of Emerald Pool which was muddy, not emerald-colored.

The waterfall which creates Emerald Pool.  Now that's a sight to see!

The view from behind the waterfall.  Yes, you WILL get wet!

Bryce Canyon National Park

Since the weather was good today, we decided to go on a day trip to Bryce Canyon National Park.  We left at 10 am and got back to the RV park at 8 pm.  We had to go back through the south entrance of Zion and then we headed east on Highway 9 through the Zion-Mt. Carmel tunnels.  The scenery at Zion heading to the east is spectacular!  As always, click on any picture to make it larger.

One of the tunnels as we headed east on Hwy 9 on our way out of Zion National Park.

                               
After we turned east from Highway 89 onto Highway 12 heading towards Bryce, we went through an area called Red Canyon.  This scenic red rock area was a foretaste of the feast to come once we entered Bryce.

One of the views of Red Canyon on Highway 12 west of Bryce.

We had lunch at Ruby's Inn and then entered Bryce National Park.  We stopped at the visitor's center and watched a 20-minute movie about the park.  We drove all the way through the park until we got to the highest point, Rainbow Point, which is at 9115 feet.  Both Dave and I handled the high altitude pretty well.  We stopped at every scenic viewpoint and got good pictures at each. 

One of the views from Rainbow Point. 

Black Birch Canyon, 8750 feet.  There was lots of snow in the park, but the roads were clear.

Ponderosa Point, elevation 8904

Agua Canyon, elevation 8800

My favorite viewpoint was Natural Bridge, elevation 8627

Farview Point, elevation 8819

Bryce Point, elevation 8300

Sunset Point, elevation 8000

Click here to read Dave's blog.  He included more details about our trip to Bryce.

Zion National Park, Shuttle Bus Tour

As Dave said in his blog, we had a short travel day today.  It took us a little less than an hour to get from St. George to Zion River RV Resort in Virgin, Utah, which is about 8 miles from the entrance to Zion National Park.

We solved the wifi problems and here I am, writing my blog via a wifi signal that has been extended by a device that we brought with us that goes on the window.  I don't have cell service here, but I can get my messages when we go to the visitor center at the national park. 

This afternoon we took the free shuttle bus ride up to the end of Zion Canyon.  Cars can drive to the visitor's center and to the museum, but then the bus turns off of Highway 9 and goes north where cars are not allowed from April 1 until the end of October.  The shuttle ride is narrated, so we learned about the history and some of the sights.  We got a good idea about which places we want to get off the shuttle and explore during the next few days. 

The visitor center's bookstore and gift shop is very complete.  I had a hard time not buying all those books!  We decided to buy a new national park passport book, which is the book where you can stamp the date and park name of each national park or monument that you visit.  You can also purchase stamps of the parks and new packages of stamps that come out each year.  We bought our old passport book twenty years ago on our first RV trips to Sequoia and Yosemite National Parks.  We've filled up most of the pages in the Rocky Mountain, Western, and Pacific Northwest regions.  It's fun to look back and see what the date was when we visited each of the parks.

First, here's a picture that I took from the RV park this evening:

And now, a few pictures taken from the shuttle bus tour:

And my favorite of today's pictures:

I hope you enjoyed this mini photo tour of Zion National Park!