We’re back on the road with a huge itinerary ahead of us. Over the next six months we’ll be traveling in our beloved Solitude fifth wheel from almost coast to coast. We’ll bring you regular updates, as usual, and our first stop was a doozie!

Zion National Park, located in southern Utah, is the third most visited national park in the country. The crowds we met proved the statistic accurate. We learned that arriving early in the morning was the best strategy for getting into the park, getting a parking space, getting onto the required shuttles, and enjoying the trails. By noon the place is swarmed!

With a whole week here we paced ourselves with a day or two of relaxation at our beautiful RV park, Zion River Resort, where we had a riverside site and could hear the Virgin River roaring past. 

The Virgin River is what created this incredible landscape, cutting canyons large and small into the ancient sandstone. One morning we followed the river from the main visitors center to the end of the park road with our bikes. My new pedal-assist mountain bike was an awesome way to make this gradual eight mile climb while keeping up with Steve. We saw great wildlife along the way and reached the Riverwalk trail before most of the crowds.

From there we walked the one mile easy trail to the end where the famed Narrows hike begins. We would have loved to hike the Narrows, a walk up the river through narrow slot canyons, but the water levels this time of year made that impossible. 

Another popular hike in Zion Canyon is to the Emerald Pools. Again, we started early one chilly morning and beat most of the crowds to the Lower, Middle and Upper Pools. Each stop on the four mile round trip brought us to a lush oasis amidst the red sandstone cliffs. Along the way there are incredible views of the canyon.

Not all of the action is found in Zion Canyon, so we made a few roadtrips to explore the outlying areas. On Saturday we hit up a great farmer’s market in St. George and replenished supplies. We also spent one day driving north out of the park towards what we thought would be the highway to Cedar Breaks National Monument. We would never recommend heading out without a little research about the roads, but we don’t always follow our own rules. We drove north on a dirt road for about an hour and half, expecting to hit the northern highway. Beautiful views, lots of wildlife, it was a very pleasant drive…until we hit snow. Using our Garmin GPS we could see that we had climbed from an elevation of about 3500 feet in Zion to over 9000 feet. Suddenly we started seeing more and more snow until we hit pavement, which was a relief. Until we got stuck! 

Luckily Steve is an expert driver and our four-wheel drive worked like a charm, and we were able to back out of the snow and back out onto the dirt road where we could turn around and head back the way we came. Scary? A little. And adventure? You bet!

Our drive back to Zion took us through the Zion-Mt. Carmel tunnel. Built in 1930, the tunnel is restricted to vehicles under 11’4”. We couldn’t drive through with our RV, but the truck fit just fine!

We also did a roadtrip to the north unit of Zion National Park, where most visitors do not visit. The area is called Kolob Canyon, and we enjoyed the five mile scenic road and the short one mile hike to the Timber Creek Overlook. The views of snow-covered peaks, red rock monoliths, and the Kaibab Plateau all the way to the north rim of the Grand Canyon were spectacular. 

Our Zion grand finale was the hike up the West Rim Trail to Scouts Lookout and beyond. Originally we had planned to hike to the top of Angels Landing via this route and had even received a permit for the dangerous climb.

However, after seeing the crowds attempting to ascend the narrow precipice, using only a chain as a guide, we opted to just watch. Nevertheless, the challenging hike took us over five miles with an elevation gain of over 1,500 feet. Walters Wiggles, the 21 switchbacks that leads to the overlook, is quite a trail-building fete.  

We feel like we hit the highlights of Zion National Park but realize this area has so much more to offer in terms of hiking, mountain biking, and other fun activities. And, while we are ready to move on to our next adventure, it’s likely we’ll be back to beautiful Zion!