We Went West
Sarah and I just got back from our trip to Las Vegas, Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park.
Wow.
We are exhausted.
We met up with our college roommates Lisa and Tyler for a few days of wilderness fun. We got into Las Vegas on Thursday morning and went back to Lisa and Tyler’s house to relax and drop off our gear. Then we went out to Red Robin for lunch. I’ve been having a craving for Red Robin for a few months now because they play all kinds of commercials in my area, however, there is only 1 in the state of Florida… so I got that fix.
After lunch we waited for Lisa to get out of work and then decided it would be a good idea to climb Lone Mountain, it was only 104 degrees out. It was only a 50 minute climb round trip, so it wasn’t bad… the view from the top was nice.
After the climb we had to go back and shower up and get down to the strip for some fun. We bought tickets to go to the Improv at Harrah’s Casino. The first guy wasn’t very funny… but then this second guy came up and killed. I wish I could remember his name… I’ll have to look it up.
Friday morning, Sarah and I woke up early for the drive to Zion National Park in Utah. What a drive, its only about 2.5 hours from Vegas, so its not long… just… desolate! There is nothing but mountains and dirt inbetween the two places. We checked into our campsite, below is the view from our tent.
Tyler and Lisa weren’t going to get there until around 5 so we decided to make our first hike on the “Angel’s Landing Trail” The hike was about 5 miles round trip. The views were amazing. At points the trail was only a few feet wide with drop offs on each side.
After the hike we me up with Lisa and Tyler at the campsite and realized that a squirrel had broken into our tent and eaten some bread and hot dog buns. Had to make a trip to the camp store for Duct Tape so we could patch the hole in the tent. After that, we settled into camp life and made a bon fire, made smores and ate canteloupe.
Saturday we woke up early, made breakfast and took off on some trail hiking, we had planned to hike the Narrows Trail, which is through the Virgin River higher up in the park. However, there were flash flood warnings and we were advised not to go there by the park rangers. Later in the day though, after absolutely no rain, we got to listen to a very talkative 7 year old tell us how cool the Narrows was… That stung a little bit.
All was not lost though as we got to hike the Hidden Canyon trail, the Emerald Pools Trail and the Watchman Trail in its place. Hidden Canyon Trail was my favorite hike of the trip. It was challenging, had breathtaking views, and was a lot of fun. This had some dicey areas with chains to use as hand rails, but it wasn’t too bad because the ridge slanted towards the mountain, so you never really felt like you were going to fall off, unlike the Angel’s Landing Trail. Once we got to the end we were in a canyon and got to do some rock climbing and other fun stuff.
At the end of the day we were exhausted but had another fun night at camp. We played Euchre and made another fire. No canteloupe was left.
Sunday morning, we all woke up early because it was starting to rain and we had to break camp. Sarah and I were heading to Bryce Canyon National Park and Lisa and Tyler went back to Las Vegas because Tyler had to work. It was pouring on our way to Bryce so the usually beautiful drive was not as nice as it usually would have been.
I’ll write all about Bryce later, our digital camera broke (damn sand) so we had to buy an arcaic disposable camera (try asking people to take your picture with one of those and not get laughed at). When we get our picture cd back I will post those and write about that park and the rest of the trip.
You can view all of our photos (except for Bryce) HERE and HERE