Joyride with the Joneses
Follow along on our family journeys!
Zion National Park
Visited: June 2016
Duration: 2 days
Accommodations: Cable Mountain Lodge, Sprindale, UT.
Zion National Park, this was the park I was most looking forward to on National Park Trip Season 1. It brought 0 disappointments.
We started our morning out leaving Bryce Canyon and heading to Zion. We found a great German Bakery about half way in between the parks. What a great surprise. It was beyond delicious. We then headed to Zion. We arrived at the east side of the park and traveled the Zion Mount Carmel Highway. Highlight for the kids was the Tunnel. If you plan to do this I would add about an hour on to your trip, this takes some time but we thought it was well worth it. We headed straight to Springdale, the town we will be staying at for the next 2 nights. Check in at our hotel, which is in the most perfection location. Walking distance to everything.
We walked over to the visitor center to gather information for our visit. We strolled down the Pa’rus Trail that lead us to the Zion Nature Center, where we did enjoyed a fantastic Junior Ranger Program, Dino Discovery. The kids made molds/fossils of dinosaur footprints and learned all about dinosaur prints found here at Zion. There was a great Junior Ranger display here for the kids to enjoy. We then embarked out on a scavenger hunt to finish up the Junior Ranger book.
Hot and ready for the pool we headed back to the hotel to relax.
Day 2
We started this day off early and still had to wait in line for the bus. Not for long though, this National Park is organized and the bus system is fabulous (compared to other parks we will visit).
We rode the bus all the way to the end of the road, Temple of Sinawava and will work our way back hiking and riding the bus. The first trail we went on was Riverside Walk, this gets you to the trail to go to the Narrows which was our plan. This was a gorgeous trail that was paved all the way until the Narrows trail starts.
When we got to the narrows entrance there was a park ranger standing there warning people not to go to far in because of possible flash flooding. We headed out a little ways but turned back and decided to explore other places in the park.
We hopped back on the bus and took it to the next stop.
We rode the bus to The Grotto, and walked the Grotto trail to Zion Lodge. A great easy hike with fantastic views.
We ate lunch at Zion Lodge and played on the front lawn before crossing the road and doing the Emerald Pools Trail. This trail was tons of fun with great overlooks but not many pools as the name implies, just some dripping water so don’t expect too much unless you are here in the spring. Check these awesome views on this trail. Also great photo ops of many different cacti along this trail as well.
After several great hikes and a wonderful day in the park we hopped back on the bus to take us back to the Visitor Center to get our first ever Junior Ranger badges! How exciting!
We really wanted to tube the river while we were here but we ran out of time. This place was an amazing stop on this trip so glad I took the advice of coworker and didn’t miss this park.
Thanks for visiting, have you been to Zion? Did you love it as much as we did?
Hunter and I want to go back and do the Narrows and Angels Landing hikes, any others you recommend?
Joyride with the Joneses 
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