Zion

My busy three-day weekend concluded on Labor Day with a trip to Zion National Park, which is about a two-and-a-half hour drive from Las Vegas. Located in southwestern Utah, it's one of those places that require constant neck-turning and the uttering of "wow."

I hadn't realized it was so close, so the notion of a day-trip never occurred to me, but my intrepid friend Lisa and her kids had me up before dawn and driving northwest. The highway takes you to Mesquite, then trims a corner of Arizona, and then up into Utah. We passed through some charming little towns, one called Hurricane, and since I doubt any hurricane has ever hit Utah, one wonders how it got the name.

The park is accessible by a bus that takes you to a number of different interesting points. We stopped at The Court of the Patriarchs, pictured above, which are three peaks named after Old Testament dudes Jacob, Abraham, and Isaac. Later we took a little walk up on an increasingly-steep incline to get to Weeping Rock. Lisa and I, old and feeble, made it about halfway. Finally, we took a walk to the Virgin River, which cut the canyon to begin with. I took off my shoes, rolled up my pants, and dipped my feet in. The water was clean and cool.

Some root beer floats at a nearby A&W was the perfect end to our trip.

Zion National Park was established in 1919. It was first called by its Paiute name, Mukuntuweap National Monument, but was later changed to what the Mormons had named it when they first settled there, Zion (which is another name for Jerusalem). The thinking went that people wouldn't go to a place they couldn't pronounce. They do have some Indian names left, like the Temple of Sinawava, which is a natural amphitheater named after the Coyote God.

If I were an expert hiker I could have tackled a few more challenging trails, such as Angel's Landing, which calls for a lot of stamina (the bus driver told us the day before there was a bottleneck at one place only four-feet wide, so people had to wait two hours in the blazing sun to get down). There is also a trail called The Narrows, which is when the river runs between two rock faces. This hike is in the river itself, gets very cold, and is only twenty feet wide in some places. Oh well, maybe in another life.

I haven't been to too many National Parks, since I've lived most of my life in the East and Midwest and most of their are in the West. I believe this is my fifth, after Mammoth Caves, the Dry Tortugas, Shenandoah, and the Everglades. I'm not sure if I've been to Biscayne Bay, I did go through that part of the country. There are 59 parks in all, so I've got some traveling to do.