Snow Canyon State Park

Water Canyon

Lambs Knoll Canyon

Today's adventure started with a pre-dawn wake up. Even with the various time changes (we've been bopping between time zones and there was that whole daylight savings time thing) which should work in our favor, it felt SO early.

Zion National Park

Our +1 we picked up on the trail

We played this trip a little bit by ear (ok, a lot) because a)weather was a bit dodgy and b) one of the hikes we wanted to do (in Zion) is permitted on a quarterly lottery system (which we did not enter, since when this current quarter's lottery happened we had no idea we would be in Utah for spring break!) OR a day before permit lottery. My plan was to enter the lottery every day that might work for us, so we entered Sunday (for a monday hike, but alas no joy) and then again on Monday before heading out to Bryce Canyon. While we were at Bryce and I had a spot of cell service I noticed a $9 charge on my credit card, which happens to equal the $3/person fee for an Angels Landing permit... but not enough cell service to actually read my email at that point. Suffice to say, we got a permit so our Tuesday plan was set!

Zion is a big time national park, but it also turns out to be fairly short on parking and after the first week in March you need to take the shuttle to get to out hike, and hence need to leave the car somewhere. The permit was also for entry onto the West Rim trail (which leads to Angels Landing) between 9am and noon, so we had a bit of a timeline we needed to follow. We woke up pretty early, had breakfast at the TinyHouse, packed snacks and some lunch adjacent foods, and headed into Springdale. Sources varied as to what time Zion NP parking wiuld be filled and we'd need ot park in town, but we are in the shoulder season so it really wasn't *that* crazy. We stopped by yet another grocery store that has an even better hiker-focused set of to-go options and procured the last bit of our lunch plan. Parked in the main parking lot by the visitors center, and even had enough time to get second breakfasts/coffee before we set out on our shuttle and to our hike.

The hike was surprisingly busy, though maybe I shouldn't have been surprised bsed on the crowds at Bryce the day before - it is spring break for lots of people, after all. Speaking of, we've seen several UVA folks on this trip, so that's been fun. But i guess since this is a more substantial, "strenuous" hike I thought maybe it wasn't for everybody. You can continue on to Scout's Landing w/o a permit, so there were definiteoly more people hiking than had permits. The first 2ish miles were mostly uphill at various pitches, but not really hard, just kinda unrelenting. When we got to the no hikers beyond this point who don't have permits, there were 4 rangers checking permits (an actual list!?) and also a pair of nesting condors hanging out in the area.

The hike out along the spine of Angels Landing has chains in many parts, but nothing felt especially dicey. Probably some snowy/slippy bits or just the sheer number of times you need to yield for 2 way traffic were the biggest issues, but from a difficulty stand point it wasn't as hard as I expected. I also realized we're pretty comfy with outdoor heights in our fam, a lot of people seemed ot be getting freaked out by the drops off the sides. We ended up "adopting' a teen hiker whose dad and brother opted out in the first 20 feet. we never caught their name (how funny is that?) but they were from Minnesota and around the same age as AJ. You can see them, in the blue long sleeve, in one of the pics above.

We had a leisurely and tasty lunch at the top, there's lots of room to spread out and hang considering how bottlenecked the half-mile of chains can be. There were some very agressive chipmunks who really wanted to share our lunch, but we heeded the millions of signs (and all of our previous experience) and did NOT feed the wildlife. I figured the trek back down along the chains might be a little bit worse, but it was also fine - just slow due to 2 way traffic. Once we were back on the "main" trail, that hike down was a bit miserable due, again, to the incline. Tt was just the perfect pitch to really box your toes and required several boot adjustments. AJ's knees were bothering them some too, and it was starting to get something like "hot" and there were a bunch of obnoxious college students RUNNING and SCREAMING their was down so this stretch was NOT the funnest part. We made it back to the shuttle stop, filled up the water bottles, and then took the bus to the Zion Human History Museum for a little visit and rest. After some time lollygagging there and checking out the exhibit, we boarded the shuttle back to the VC, and this time there were a bunch of college-aged boys who were all sleeping on their walking sticks (or each other). Based on their dry bibs and such, they looked like alums of the Narrows hike (would love to do it next time!) and it clearly plum tuckered them out!

The day concluded with ice cream, then a stop by Zion Adventures to set up a canyoneering trip for the following morning. With the details of that settled, and the knowledge we'd be meeting our guide Whitney at the literal crack of dawn the next day, we called it a night and grabbed take out from Lonny Boy's BBQ in Hurricaine.

Bryce Canyon National Park

Looks like I'm just being cool and wearing my Chacos at the visitor center because I totally brought my hiking boots so of course I'll just change when we get to the trail. Right?

Yeah, not so much. Apparently today's the day I forgot my boots. Wes might have forgotten his Chacos, too, but considering there was snow on the ground and a bunch of MUD everywhere I think I win the prize for the oops today.

But actually, it turned out fine. We received some extreme words of wisdom from the ranger at the visitors center in terms of hiking direction, so we climbed UP the steeper and slippier leg of the trail (most people seemed to start down that one, and you could tell when you met them in the base of the ampitheater because their bodies (or maybe just their butts?) we're covered in mud. A lot of slipping on the way down.

But I am getting ahead of myself. We started the day with 2nd breakfasts at Sweet Sage Coffee Co. in Colorado City, Arizona, which is an hour time difference from both out TinyHouse in Utah and our eventual destination of Bryce Canyon (also in Utah) so we're just all kinds of confused on time here. Also I apparently missed it, but a real cowboy (spurs on boots? real boots? chaps? hat?) stopped by for a latte while we were hanging. This stop was also strategic b/c there was Wifi and AJ was finishing up something for their Physics class since the mod was ending and they missed some school due to an unfortunate and ill-timed bout of norovirus. But as is often the case, I digress....

We wound our way through some extreme NOTHING in Arizona and then back to Utah, this time Kanab which was cute. We stopped for some lunch things at a grocery store - the prepared/take it away sandwiches and salads and sushi etc has been pretty impressive in these little towns, presumably we're not the first hikers to think of this plan. We eventually made our way to Bryce (this was the longest drive of the trip, more or less, save the Vegas of it all) where we at our lunch overlooking the ampitheater and the snowcapped hoodoos. We did the requiste hike down into the canyon - AJ will tell you, since they worked on the Bryce Jr Ranger badge, that it's not really a canyon because a canyon has a river flowing through it, and Bryce does not! - explored a bit and hiked back up and out, and then along the rim trail a ways. It was somewhere between 4 and 5 miles (but who's counting) and definitely enough to give us a feel for the park.

There were some theatrics with trying to get the mud off of our boots (or ya know, Chacos) but we did our best and piled into the car for thr 2 hour ride back to the TinyHouse. AJ promptly fell asleep, of course, and since we didn't realy have a dinner plan we stopped in Kanab at the Rocking V Cafe which turned out to be eclectically excellent. Reccomend it for sure if you find yourself in Kanab. A lovely dinner and some yummy dessert was had by all, and we made our way back to the TinyHouse and fell promptly into bed.

Valley of Fire State Park

See? Trails are just a state of mind out here....

So much sand.... it's like the glitter of the natural world?

First stop/hike on our trip to Southern Utah (via Vegas, so things in SE Nevada are totally fair game) was Valley of Fire State Park. A quick scan of the map did not yield a loop hike in the 3-5 mile range, so we consulted our old friend/nemesis AllTrails and found a lovely figure 8 that was built out of 2 of the more popular hikes in the park. Seemed pretty ideal?

Lesson #1: just because a group appears to have been coming from where you think you are going on a loop, don't trust them... especially when they say things like "I thought this was only a mile, we've walked more than 2 miles now..." etc. Suffice to say, we parted ways with the slightly more formal trail (it's really just a bunch of rocks, what even is a trail??) and in an attempt to get back onto what we thought was the trail we ended up at a nice picnic area (with pit toilets, which are EVERYWHERE around here!) and took the opportunity for some lunch. At this point, we were able to get back on some actual trails, but then our figure 8 ended up more like a Möbius strip and we walked the same chunk of trail 3 or 4 times in the service of getting to all the other parts of our loop-de-loo.

Playing Hooky

Somehow we made it to early March with 2 unused lift tickets to Wintergreen AND said mountain still 100% open. So, naturally the only thing to do in this instance is to take a literal snow day and go play on the mountain. As we should, and so we did.