Zion ~ Day 2 (in transit to Idaho)

Travel Day....and again tomorrow.  We are spending one night at Mountain Home, ID.  Tomorrow, we will be heading into Oregon.  In the meantime, I'm trying to get caught up with everything we have done so far.  I want to share more of our experiences and photos of Zion National Park.

Day 2 ~ Zion National Park

This is actually our second visit to this park, but it was several years ago and all I remember is winding roads with awesome sights of peaks, cliffs, and hanging rocks.   

We are planning to come back again next year with my brother Jay.  He would like to see Bryce National Park as well as Zion's Narrows.  We haven't seen either one, so we will see something new with him.

 

On our second day of visiting Zion, we took the shuttle to the end of the road.  We walked the mile to the mouth of the Narrows and watched a couple of ladies cross the river wearing flip-flops.  There were a few people crossing with tennis shoes and some were barefooted...must have tough feet.   Watching them crossed, Dan and I decided we would have to come prepared to walk to Narrows ~ water-proof bags for camera, walking sticks (most definitely!), and good walking shoes.

He almost went in face first

The Rock Squirrels are little beggars. They will walk right up to you and start begging.  I did not see anyone feeding them and there is a $100 fine if caught feeding them, but somebody has been feeding them.  We also saw one squirrel checking out an empty stroller for food while another was trying to get into someone's backpack.  Shameless little guys!

No food?  Fine.  I'll beg from those people.

Nom! Nom!  Delicious bark.

Yea, I see you eyeing my bark.  Go get your own.

After our first walk, we took the shuttle to the Lodge and had a delicious taco/salad bar lunch.  Yum!  We walked off our lunch by crossing the street and taking the Lower Emerald Pool trail.  We got a little wet on that trail from the upper pools dripping over the overhang into the lower pool below us.

Lower Emerald Pool

The two trails we took are easy for children since they were all paved.  I read there are a couple of more that are paved and wheelchair accessible.  

 

I better get into better shape this winter if I hope to see the Weeping Wall as well as the Narrows and Bryce National Park next spring.  The Narrows is 9 miles long.  I'll be lucky if I can do 6 miles round trip, but I bet the photo ops will be fantastic!

 On our way home, we had an unexpected opportunity to watch the Utah Firefighters in action fighting a wildfire on a hillside near the road.  The helicopter was filling up nearby and flying right over our heads on their way to the fire.

Water being dropped in front of the Firefighters

 Later, we heard on the news that the fire was out after it burned 500 acres.  Two Firefighters were hurt and no homes lost.  Kudos to all Firefighters!  They have a very tough job.

Happy Trails!