Days 5-6: Zion National Park

The sun woke us up fairly early in the morning at the Grand Canyon camp site.  I had a pretty rough night, with a terrible bloody nose in the middle of the night, and some altitude sickness that hit soon after.  Greg actually had to check and make sure I was still alive in the morning.  Apparently he was pretty worried when he woke up to find blood all over the tent in the morning.  After a banana and some oatmeal, I was good to go.

We repacked that car...again, and drove to a few more vista points along the canyon rim before heading towards Zion National Park.  The drive to Zion was about 4.5 hours through the desert, so we also stopped at a few scenic spots along the way.  It was definitely a beautiful drive, but it's hard to believe that people live all the way out here.

View of the Grand Canyon from the South rim.

View from the Navajo Bridge in Arizona.

We decided since we were going to be leaving Zion from the West Entrance, that we'd enter from the East Entrance, and boy are we glad we did.  Zion National Park was absolutely beautiful.  I've really never seen anything like it.  Soon after entering the park we drove through the Zion-Mount Carmel Tunnel.  It's a 1.1 mile tunnel that takes you into Zion National Park.  It was so amazing because you'd go into the tunnel, then come out the other side in what seemed like an entirely different world.

Zion National Park entrance.

It was late in the afternoon by the time we got to the park and we went to the visitor center to get some info on hikes to do the next day.  The camp sites in the park are first come first serve, and fill up pretty early in the day, so we ended up having to pay double for a camp site just outside the park.  We decided that the next day we were going to do a pretty strenuous hike to the top of Angels Landing.  The pamphlet said that because of the sun, to start the hike between 6-8 in the morning, so we ate dinner, and got to bed pretty early.

We woke up at about 7:00 the next morning, packed up our camp site, and headed into the park.  Zion is very organized, and in the busy months, has everyone park at the visitor center, and take buses to all of the sites in the canyon. So, we hopped on the bus, and got off at the Grotto to start the Angels Landing hike.  This is one of the most popular hikes at Zion, but we were happy to see that only a few people got off at that stop with us.  We were also really surprised that almost all of the hike was paved.  I guess that so as many people as possible can experience the amazing views.  The first section of the hike takes you up several switchbacks to a spot called Scouts Lookout.  This is where most people stop on the hike, because the remained of the hike, very steep, unpaved, with thousand foot drop offs on either side.  There were chains, bolted into the rock, to hold on to while climbing the rest of the hike.  This was right up our alley. 

Courtney beginning the final hike to the top of Angels Landing

Greg at the "true" summit of Angels Landing

Courtney and Greg at the top of Angels Landing

View from Angels Landing

There were definitely a lot more people on the way up as we made our way back down to the bottom.  They all looked like they were struggling a bit from the heat.  Apparently they didn't get the memo that you're supposed to start the hike early in the morning.  After we got down, we did another shorter hike called the Emerald Pools.  This hike consisted of three pools, that in the summer, grow a green algae that makes the pools glow emerald.  Well, in early May the algae hadn't quite kicked into high gear and the pools were more a muddy brown color, but it was still a nice little hike.

Waterfalls at the Emerald Pools

After the hike we headed back down to the bottom, had an early dinner, and set off on the 2.5 hour drive to Las Vegas.  We were picking our friend Jeff up that night, and climbing in Red Rocks for the next few days.  On the drive we started to notice some concerning noises coming from the front axle of the car.  As we got closer into Vegas the noise got worse.  By the time Greg picked Jeff up we knew something was definitely wrong, it sounded like we were dragging a piece of metal under the car.  Unfortunately, we had hit our first (and hopefully only) snag of the trip and decided to hold off on an early morning climb.  We were going to get the car checked out first thing in the morning and hope for the best.
Dun Dun Dunnnn....