It’s not that we weren’t blown away by the beauty of the North Rim. We will surely return to spend more time wandering its trails.

But for some reason (and remember, our base of operations is Kanab) we (the birthday girl) decided that it would be fun to head another direction today. So we left town headed the other direction, turned left at Mt. Carmel Junction, and the day in Zion National Park – we and an easy half-million of our closest friends.

It may be that this is the perfect season for visiting Zion, but by the time we drove thru the east gate and arrived at the visitor center (about 10:00) the parking lot was full. We ended up parking in neighboring Springdale (and counted ourselves lucky to find a place there. The park was actually running shuttles thru the town picking up parkers. We were close enough to walk. (I mean, if your going to spend the day hiking thru the park, what’s an extra mile from where you parked?

Anyway we parked and grabbed lunch at a handy Subway.

Then we entered the park and made our way to the “thru the park” shuttle stop and got in a Disney line to get on a bus.

Once on the bus we decided that our best option was to ride to the end of the line (Temple of Sinawava) and start with the Riverside Walk. Most of the people on the bus had the same idea. At the end of the Riverside Walk is the entrance to The Narrows. (Dave and Glenda can say more about that.) I offer the following as an indication of how busy this section was today. Sometime when it isn’t so busy we’ll come back.

From there we worked our way back, stopping at Big Bend to take pictures of people making their way to Angel’s Landing.

I’ve always been disappointed that I didn’t get all the way to the landing on our last trip to Zion, but Cheryl suggested that today wasn’t the day. I agreed that if I were going to fall off the mountain it would be better not to do it on her birthday.

Along the way back we took another couple of short hikes: Emerald Pools, Court of the Patriarchs. I’ve selected some of the best of our photos:

Eventually it was time to leave. We returned to Kanab, Randy to nap, Cheryl to check out the gift shops. This is Utah, the gift shops are closed on Sunday. So it was Randy to nap, Cheryl to read until dinner.

Dinner this evening was at the Rockin’ V Cafe. Fortunately Cheryl had made reservations while she was out. The place was that busy – and for good reason. The food was that good.

Tomorrow we make our way down to Sedona to join the rest of our Road Scholar crew. Till then, Happy Trails.