Zion...you gotta be the early the bird. - Park #5

After a really nice dinner at the Bryce National Park Lodge we went to bed and got up early. As we sat in the hotel restaurant the next morning in Bryce we watched the sunrise, one of the only customers up that early, it was beautiful! Then, on the road again, our last day in Utah, we headed to Zion National Park.

We arrived at Zion around 9 a.m. and came in from the east. If you have never taken that drive, you are seriously missing out! It is incredible, the park is as I like to say, "in your face!" meaning it is a winding road with rock walls on either side of you AND....tunnels. Ooooh! So, crazy! One of the tunnels is 1.1 miles long! I don't what it is about tunnels cut into a mountain of rock that is so exciting, but it's almost like you're on an amusement park ride. Here are some shots:

It was a little chilly so Ashley and I layered up, got what we needed from the visitor's center, and hopped onto the shuttle bus. There are 9 bus stops in Zion, you have to use the shuttle for half the year because of all of the traffic.

We got on at stop #1 and got off at #5 and decided to do the Emerald Pools hike. Very quickly we realized that we should have left the layers in the car. Whatever you shed you have to carry. Oh well, good exercise I guess.

The Emerald Pools hike was fun, waterfalls like tunnels, are so beautiful to look at.

Here's the view from the top:

After the hike we walked up to the grotto, but didn't really see anything. Did we miss it? Please send us pictures if you've done it.

Then, we made the decision to head back to the car to drop off all of our extra gear...big mistake! We rode the shuttle back to stop #1. There were now cars parked along the sides of the roads everywhere on the way! Finally, back at stop #1 it looked as if the line for the shuttles was never ending. We only had a few more hours at Zion and we didn't want to spend it waiting in line for a shuttle. We made the decision to stay on the bus and not get off.

We didn't have enough time to try to do Angel's Landing plus I'm not great with heights and I wasn't sure if I should try it. I didn't want to get stuck up there. So, we went up to stop #7 to Weeping Rock. It was a short walk but there was a longer hike to Observation Point. We didn't try it, but would love to see pics if you did. Zion is an amazing park Here are some more of our favorites:

Lastly, we were hoping to check out some of The Narrows so we took the shuttle up to stop #9. We did the riverside walk, but unfortunately, the Narrows were closed. The water level was just too high.