The drive from Bryce Canyon to Zion National Park was not too long. The scenery starts before you get into the park. The scenery is right in your face! You literally drive right up to it. Colourful "mountains" with strange striations in the rock. Some mesas were whitish grey, some red, with stripes. It's similar to Bryce in that a lot of the colours are shared, yet they are a very different look. In Bryce Canyon, to viewpoints are above the formations and in Zion you are immersed in it.
It is mandatory in Zion to take the shuttle busses to get around in the park. I like the idea, there's a lot less congestion because of it. The Labor Day long weekend saw 48,000 visitors in Zion National Park! They thought Memorial Day was busy with 45,000. Zion is a hiking destination. This is where the famed Angels Landing hike is located-not a hike we could do. We parked the car at the museum and caught the bus to immediately go to do a hike. We started with the Hidden Canyon and Weeping Rock hike. We stopped and had lunch in a nice spot. When we got most of the way to hidden canyon, we had to tap out and turn around. It was at a point where you had to go down a short steep portion, around a curve and continue the upward climb. That portion of the hike had a rope attached to the canyon wall because the ledge was so narrow. No thanks! We were getting vertigo at the rim of Bryce Canyon, so this was going to be out of the question. We went back down and went to Weeping Rock instead. That was very cool and a different rock formation than you see from the ground. It was busy there because of the long weekend and also because it's one of the easier hikes in the park.
Since we were only spending 1 night at Zion, we went to the Visitor Center to make sure we hit the highlights. The next hike was the Emerald Pool hike. A bit of a misnomer because there was nothing Emerald about the little pool that that water ran into. It was still a nice hike and gave us an opportunity to take some photos. There's seems to be an idiot in each park and Zion wasn't left out. On. The Emerald Pool hike there are 3 levels to the hike-lower pool, middle and high. We were at the middle pool level when we hear all this yelling. We realize that a family at the middle pool is yelling at an idiot at the upper level to pose for photos. He was standing at the edge of the waterfall! Thankfully, we did not have to witness an incident.
Other than a walk along the river, that was what we were interested in in Zion.
We walked from the Lodge to the museum to pick up the car and go to our hotel in Kanab. We saw a deer right close to us by the path, but he seemed quite used to people and just carried on eating.
Dinner was Mexican food and was quite good. It was certainly handy since it was right across the street from our hotel.
it was 9:30 and we were in our room when we heard this annoying repetitive thumping noise. I thought it was the young kid that we saw riding his bike in the parking lot when we checked in. Maybe he was playing basketball in the hall and bouncing the ball over and over. I finally opened the door and stuck my head out to see what was going on. We were the fourth room from the end of the hall. The exit door at the end of the hotel was open and there was and old man out there swinging something against the building, just like you would swing a bat. There was an old lady with her shoe off, slapping the bugs against the wall that were coming in because the old guy had the door open. Old lady number 3 was watching the other two. I yell down the hall, what is he doing? One of the old ladies said, we bought this wine and we don't have a corkscrew and he's trying to open the bottle. I was just speechless, so I just shook my head and went back in my room. The banging stopped after that.
Steps on the fitness tracker: 14,600