Provo, UT

Early Mormon settlers, awed by beautiful Zion Canyon, called it that after the biblical “City of God”. One look and you can see why.

We couldn’t have asked for more ideal conditions for our day at Zion National Park. We visited on a sunny, 50-degree day over Thanksgiving weekend, with bright blue skies and crisp air. Zion is Utah’s most visited national park, so we were happy to be there during the off-season, although it did seem to be a particularly popular weekend. An advantage to traveling off-season is that you can drive your own car inside the park. During peak tourist season (late spring through early fall) park visitors are required to travel by shuttle bus.

We arrived at Zion’s East Entrance via Highway 9 from Bryce Canyon. Our first stop was at Checkerboard Mesa, a cross-bedded mass of slick rock. From there, you drive through the 1.1-mile long Zion-Mount Carmel tunnel to the beginning of the Zion Canyon scenic drive. We concentrated our visited in the Zion Canyon area, the park’s most popular area. Other areas of the park, such as Kolob Canyons, offer extraordinary backcountry hiking.

Along the scenic drive there are stops for major sights such as the Sentinel, Court of the Patriarchs, the Emerald Pools, Angel’s Landing, and Weeping Rock. (We skipped Weeping Rock since we had our preschooler in tow, and remembered from a visit many years before that there were some steep drop-offs.) We let our daughter stretch her legs and play in the red sand, then had lunch overlooked by the Court of the Patriarchs–talk about lunch with a view!

The scenic drive is about six miles long, and ends at the Temple of Sinawava (the Coyote God of the Paiute Indians). At that point you can do a light hike to the mouth of the Narrows. The Riverside Walk is an easy paved trail with a minor elevation change of only 57 feet. We saw families with strollers and two assisted wheelchairs. The Riverside Walk is about two miles roundtrip, and takes one to two hours. Hikers are permitted into the mouth of the Narrows from the bottom, but beware of flash flooding. (Hikers who choose to start at the top and do the entire 16 miles must obtain a permit.)

You can easily explore Zion National Park in a day or less, unless you plan to do major hiking. A lot of people choose to stay in nearby Springdale and enter the park from the south, but we stayed at Ruby’s Inn in Bryce, about 90 minutes northeast, where we had easy access to Zion, Bryce Canyon, and Scenic Byway 12. This is a great trip that you could do in a weekend (just a few hours south of Provo)–and if you live in Utah you should!

Entrance Fees: $25 per vehicle for 7 days, or purchase a National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands Pass for $80 if you’re planning to visit several parks within a year (with Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Arches, and Moab National Parks all within a few hours, it’s worth it).

For more information:
http://www.utah.com/nationalparks/zion.htm

For a map:
http://www.nps.gov/zion/planyourvisit/upload/ZIONParkMap_web.pdf