We got back last night from a 4-day camping trip to Zion National Park in southern Utah. It was a fabulous trip. Zion is absolutely breathtaking. I told Jared that I think I liked it more than the Grand Canyon. The Grand Canyon is stunning but we saw it only from up on the ledges. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more if I could have seen it closer. But in Zion we were in the midst of these beautiful red rock canyons. It is just gorgeous. One of my favorite things about the park is the contrast between the huge, leafy green trees and the cactus and yucca growing at the base of them. It was a wonderful melding of mountain and desert. Zion has some great hiking trails. I am so proud of the kids for hiking as much as we did. Everyone on the trails kept remarking to us how awesome our kids were for doing these hikes. So that I have a record of our trip for myself when I am old and my memory fails me, this is my Zion travelog.
We left Thursday for Zion around noon. Jared finished the work day by working in the car. Man, I love his job! It is about a 4 hour drive to Zion. We got there, set up the tents and blew up the air mattresses, and got the fire going for dinner. We had foil dinner packets and dutch oven apple pie. Yum!
Then we took a little walk along the Virgin River, which was alongside our campsite. On the way back to camp, we saw a family of mule deer right by our site. Then since Jared and I were tired we tried to get the kids to bed early. However, they weren’t that tired as they had slept in the car. Parker wasn’t feeling well and was very restless that night. In addition, it was very windy and rained a bit during the night. So at 3:30 am I decided I was tired of just laying there not sleeping so I got up and went to the restrooms to shower. Then I read for a bit and slept for maybe an hour or two.
Friday morning, the younger kids were up with the sun. I was super grouchy and decided that we were going to go home a day early as I couldn’t take 3 nights camping. I pushed through my grouchiness and made bacon and eggs for breakfast. Our new campstove rocks and I enjoyed cooking on it. Then we went to the visitor’s center and picked up the boys’ Jr. Ranger booklets. We then hopped on the shuttle to tour Zion Canyon. Zion’s shuttles are really nice. They are clean, comfortable, and very stroller friendly (as opposed to the Grand Canyon’s, which were not particularly stroller-friendly). We got off at a couple of stops. One of these was the Weeping Rock stop. We hiked up 1/2 a mile to the Weeping Rock, which is a big overhanging cliff with water dripping through it everywhere and hanging gardens. Then we hiked down to the creek below it. After lunch at the Lodge we hiked up to the Lower Emerald Pool. This was a 1.2 mile hike on a dirt trail. It was pretty hot at 1pm but the kids pushed through it and made it! About halfway up, Andrew found himself a friend in a hiker behind us and held her hand while he hiked up to the pool. Ice cream cones were a necessary reward for the kids after this hike. We took the shuttle back to camp and then went fishing in the river. We have a Rocket Rod that is so fun even I like fishing with it. Then we showered and drove through the Zion-Mt. Carmel tunnel. This is a really cool tunnel (with no lights inside!) that is over a mile long and was constructed in 1929. After this we headed to town for a way overpriced, not very good dinner (if you go to Zion do not eat at Wild Willie’s in Springdale). We followed this with a really cool Ranger presentation on bats. We headed back to our tents and the kids were out as soon as their heads hit the pillow and so were we. We all slept like rocks the entire night until 8 am Saturday morning.
Saturday morning, after blueberry pancakes, the boys turned in their Jr. Ranger booklets and received their 4th Jr. Ranger badge this year! I decided that since we all slept so well the night before that we could stay another day instead of going home early. So we headed to the Human History Museum and watched a great film about Zion. Then we set off for our biggest adventure yet. That morning, outside the restroom at the campground, a guy told us about a hidden, little known waterfall in the park. We asked a ranger about it and he didn’t know what we were talking about. So we did an iPhone google and found some directions to it. We followed an obscure little path down to the Pine Creek. Here we saw more weeping rocks and figured this must be the waterfall but that it wasn’t very wet right now. So we just played in the creek for a few minutes. After a little bit, a lady and her teenage daughters walked down the path above us. She called out “hello” and smiled at us. We decided to ask her if she knew about the waterfall. She did and that was where they were headed! So we followed her along. She warned us that it was a tricky, tough way up to the waterfall but we figured we were up for the challenge. We did not know what we were getting ourselves into. We had to climb over huge boulders (with 6 kids 7 and under, including an infant) and then swim across a very deep grotto over to a moss-covered plateau and climb out. Then a scramble over the plateau and all of a sudden… a beautiful waterfall complete with a little slide down into a warm pool with a sandy beach. Hidden paradise! Taylor said this was his favorite part of the trip because it was like we had our own private island for a while. This woman and her daughters were so fabulous and we would not have been able to make it to the waterfall or back out of it without them. One of them held Parker while the others helped Jared pull kids out of the grotto while I swam them across and then they sat with them to keep them safe. They were such kind people. One of the daughters goes to BYU. While we were swimming at the waterfall, a few men came back there. We started chatting with them after they commented that they couldn’t believe we had gotten 6 small kids back there. It turns out they are from Springville! How crazy that back in this hidden spot in the park we come across people from our town! Anyway, the waterfall was totally the highlight of the trip for me. Of course, that night while I was falling asleep I kept having flashes of all that could have gone wrong getting to and from the waterfall. After our waterfall adventure, we showered back at camp and roasted hot dogs and ate s’mores. We followed this with another terrific Ranger presentation, this one about mountain lions. I could write a whole huge post about all the cool things we learned about bats and mountain lions. Again, the kids fell asleep as soon as we got back to the tents.
(Jared took all the pictures at the waterfall on his camera and hasn’t gotten them off his camera yet, so I’ll have to post waterfall pics later.)
Sunday morning, we packed up and headed home! Although we had a wonderful time, it was great to be home showering in a real shower and sleeping in a real bed.
We have had some great vacations with the kids this year where we have gotten to spend real quality time with them! We asked Taylor where he wanted to go on vacation next. After telling him that no, we can’t go to Beijing to the Olympics, he told us that he wants to go to Bryce Canyon and to Yellowstone. We are already planning on going to Yellowstone next summer for an Ottley family reunion and we’ll definitely fit a Bryce Canyon camping trip into next summer as well. We asked the kids if they wanted to go to Disneyland next year as that had been the plan and got an overwhelming response of “No!” I knew my kids were odd (they all hate french fries!) but they’d rather camp than go to Disney? Well, that will save us a lot of money!
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