Zion, Bryce, Vegas, and the Hoover Dam

The last trip I took was with a very good friend to Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park in southern Utah. We spent a couple of days in Zion, the next couple of days in Bryce, and then went to Vegas for a week. On our way home, we stopped at the Hoover Dam (never had seen it before) and took a tour.

Zion National Park

It was probably between 40-50 degrees at Zion, which is at about 8,700 feet. Great weather for hiking and the fall colors were just beautiful against the red rocks of the canyon. I have to admit Zion is probably my favorite national park that I've visited. Just the sheer magnitude of the canyon and the colors everywhere... just awesome. I highly recommend it for avid hikers. The first hike we did was Angel's Landing - probably the scariest hike I've ever done but also one of the coolest. You hike up the canyon wall and then you get to a point where you're surrounded by sheer drop offs on either side of you - and we're talking thousand foot drop offs - and you have to keep going on slippery sandstone, sometimes holding onto one of the chains they have for balance... until you get to the top of this enormous rock outcropping in the middle of the canyon. From there, you can do a 360 and see all of Zion Canyon... it's just beautiful. Not hard to figure out why they called that particular spot Angel's Landing.

We did a few other hikes along the canyon walls, some along the river that runs through Zion, some back up farther into the canyon crevasses. It sprinkled on us a little but the hikes were very enjoyable. I think we covered about 10 miles in the park during our 1.5 days there.

We stayed at the Zion Lodge right in the park - the only lodge that's actually within the park grounds. The room was cozy and it was great being right there in the park so you didn't have to drive the windy drive every time you wanted to do a hike. There was only one restaurant which was mediocre, but hey, it served its purpose.