Day 15 & 16(4/15&16)
Zion . . .
Springdale, Utah is one street town of motels, restaurants, gift shops, cafes, a grocery store and so on. There is a free shuttle bus that runs the length of the town – maybe two miles – and deposits passengers at the park entrance. After a mid-morning breakfast at Me Me Café (across the street from out motel), we boarded the shuttle and walked across the bridge at the last stop and into the park, flashed our Senior Pass at the entrance kiosk and walked onto the park shuttle.
The feature attraction to the casual tourist in Zion NP is the canyon, down which the shuttle travels to the end and back stopping at several points of interest and trailheads. About halfway from The Junction – where the canyon loop meets main road – to the end, it began snowing. It snowed enough to partially cover the ground but had turned into a light rain by the time we reached the end and started heading back. Connie and I got off at The Lodge.
Our chief reference for a place like Zion is Yosemite Park. While planning our trip, we had briefly considered staying at the lodge or, at least, having dinner there. We pictured something like the Ahwahnee, though of course, not as grand. The Zion lodge is recently built and not very impressive, and, on that day crammed with tourist trying to get out of the rain. We spent time perusing the gift shop and grabbed a hamburger and coffee in the café. Since every surface in the lobby was covered with people, food and children, we opted to eat outside under the expansive entry awning. It was cold, though not enough to spoil our watching kids playing with what slush the snow had left behind while we sipped our hot coffee.
Heading back, we got off the shuttle at The Junction and walked the river trail – really a concrete sidewalk – the less than two miles back to the park entrance. We looked around the Park Service exhibits at the entrance complex and then crossed over the bridge, hopped on the town shuttle and went back to our hovel – I mean hotel. Because we had so enjoyed breakfast there and weren’t in the mood to go restaurant shopping, we went back to Me Me Café for a crepe dinner. Afterward we walked for a while along the road away from the park to an area of a couple of nicer hotels and restaurants. We went into a gift shop and Connie found a tee shirt she liked. Then, back to the dump and bed.
In the morning we ate a breakfast of yogurt, granola and orange juice in our land yacht and picked up coffee at Me Me’s before boarding the shuttle for the park. The weather had cleared up and promised to warm up and we were looking forward to a day of short hikes and picture taking.
Like Yosemite, Zion’s canyon has towering cliffs, though of varying strata of river eroded sandstone rather than glacier carved granite. And though the cliffs didn’t rise as high above their bases as they do in Yosemite, the narrowness of the canyon created the same impressive effect. But that narrowness also constricts the area over which the multitude of visitors can spread out. The Park Service has done their best to accommodate all those people by providing wide paths, with many of those on or near the canyon floor paved. Though we were there early in the season, it was not hard to imagine a Disneyland like feeling deep in nature out in the middle of nowhere at the season’s height.
At the turn around point of the shuttle route, the canyon opens up into a pretty meadow dappled with Cottonwoods. Here the canyon splits. The Virgin River, the mechanism of this work of natural art, flows down from the right and the adjacent foot trail takes visitors further upstream from the shuttle stop. This is the route to one of the park’s gems – The Narrows. At the end of the path the canyon narrows considerably. When conditions allow, people can hike further upstream, mostly in the shallow river. Here the canyon is supposed to be a gallery of curving smooth walls in all shades reds. It is the goal of most every visitor healthy enough to walk up the stream and goes on for miles. When conditions allow. With all the snow and rain upstream, The Narrows were closed. Flash flood warnings were all over the place.
We turned around at The Narrows, walked back and boarded the shuttle for other trailheads. One of our favorites was the Emerald Pools Trail. We climbed for a while and then the trail traversed a semicircle carved into the overhanging cliff. Halfway around I noticed the whisper effect. This is what I call something Connie and I learned about in the gallery high up in the rotunda of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. There, someone can whisper next to the wall and another person listening halfway around gallery can hear the first person as if sitting right next to him. I was so excited about it that I explained it to two young ladies whose father was farther down the trail. I had them tell him to say something next to the wall while they listened close to it. Sure enough. It worked as advertised. Later I offered to and took a picture of the three of them.
It was at that semicircle overhang that water spilled down into the lower of the two emerald pools. Connie and I took turns taking pictures of each standing near enough to the spray to get wet. Our last walk of the day was a repeat of yesterday’s walk from The Junction to the Park Entrance. It had been good day of walking and picture taking and after our disappointment over our lodgings and the weather, we felt redeemed. And, Connie’s Fitbit recorded 22,000 steps and 50 floors!
The previous night we had noticed people lined up outside a restaurant up a short side street near our motel, so we put our name in for dinner. The wait was about 25 minutes so we figured we could walk back to the gift shop and buy the shirt Connie had liked last night. We got back just in time to be seated and enjoyed a dinner worthy of the crowds that wait to eat there.
We had originally planned to stay in Springdale for four nights and explore both Zion and Bryce Canyon from that base camp. Before getting to Zion we had decided to put Bryce off to another time and during our visit we decided to stay just three nights in order make time to stop at Monument Valley and Shiprock on our way to Mesa Verde. In the morning we grabbed pastries at a place across from Oscar’s and coffee from Me Me’s and set out excited about the day ahead.