Zion National Park

From the Grand Canyon we headed to a little AirBnB in Orderville, Utah. The house was a 3 bedroom rancher and was quite comfortable.  

The kids particularly liked the cowboy room so they rotated who got to sleep in there the two nights we stayed there.

The next morning we were off to Zion National Park.

 

You have to pass through a long tunnel through the mountain to get into the park.

Once inside, we parked at the Visitor Center and took a shuttle to our first hike.

We decided to do our "hardest" hike first, so we did the Emerald Pools trail. We hit the lower, middle, and upper pools, before turning off onto the Kayenta trail to catch the shuttle from a different stop to head to our next destination (2.66 miles).

The Emerald Pools trail had so many waterfalls. In fact, the whole park had lots of waterfalls! But on this particular trail we got to walk under one!

We had to hike through some narrow slot canyons, but the kids loved it. The rock scrambling was definitely the highlight for them.

Finally made it to the upper pool. We had gotten stuck behind an influencer group (official NP photographer and everything) and had to scramble to get ahead because they kept pausing to take ridiculous pictures. We were happy to make it up before them.

From there we hiked down the Kayenta trail.

You can see several of the waterfalls from far away on our way down (at least 3 in the picture below).

This was slightly off the trail, but like I said, the rock scrambling was everyone's favorite part.

The Kayenta trail was super muddy in places.

From there, we took the shuttle to the last stop: the Narrows. I had really wanted to do the Narrows (a hike in the river with no dry ground), but with the snow melt from the night before, the water was freeeeezing and I heard in places it was up to your chest and neck. So we did the Riverside Walk to the mouth of the Narrows and skipped the Narrows (2.33 miles).

At the banks of the Virgin River, which runs through Zion.

More waterfalls!

At the mouth of the Narrows. You can see some well prepared people with poles and waders heading in.

And back out. We were told this is the most accessible hike in the park.

Then we were off to the Court of the Patriarchs (.85 miles). Below are the three mountains named after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. On this hike we literally passed almost no one. It was amazing.

Since we had the trail to ourselves, we stopped for lots of snacks and water and rested on this one.

Everyone was pretty tired, but we still decided to do Canyon Overlook on the way out. This hike was 1.5 miles, just outside the tunnel to get into the park.

We were surprised. This hike actually was the most "dangerous" one we had done for the day (or on the trip so far), but was very, very cool. I really enjoyed this one and thought it was well worth it. 

The view from up here was incredible. You can see the road into Zion behind us.

Zion was amazing. I would definitely plan a trip back here. Our favorite of the hikes we did were Canyon Overlook and Emerald Pools. I would love to go with just Chris and do the Narrows, or potentially think about Angel's Landing. This was a very cool park - it made everyone's lists for top places we visited!