27. Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah

Dates: December 20-24, 2015

For this winter break, we planned a trip through a few of the National Parks in Utah and Arizona. We have seen so many beautiful pictures and heard great stories about these places, so we were very excited to plan a hiking trip to these parks. Instead of counting each location as a separate trip and being out of trips to add to our “30/30” list, we decided to group a couple together and post as 3 places. This way, we still have one trip left for January!

On December 20, we flew into Las Vegas and spent the evening exploring Freemont Street. Since we had picked up our rental vehicle straight from the airport, we were ready to hit the road first thing in the morning! 

    We drove through stunning scenery in Northern Arizona and Utah, and landed in Zion National Park later that day. 

We had known that we would have cold weather and snow on this trip, but we hadn’t really thought about ice being an issue. We were told at the Visitor Center that “traction devices” would be highly recommended on most trails we planned on doing throughout the parks, so we got ourselves some ice trekkers that came in very handy throughout our trip! We decided on our first hike in the park and spent an hour and a half on the Watchman hike, which gave us a great view of the valley! 

  

 

 

We also drove to the end of the scenic road in the park, and walked the Riverside Walk through a narrow canyon. It was dark by the time we finished this trail, so we drove to the place we were staying in La Verkin and had dinner.

In the morning, we headed back into the park- we had planned on doing the Angel’s Landing hike, but were hesitant about it because it was raining so much. We decided to try it anyways, which was a great idea! Decked out in rain gear, we headed uphill and enjoyed the trail through a canyon. Near the top, we hung onto the chains bolted into the rocks and travelled as far as we felt we could. There was so much fog that we wouldn’t have been able to see any of the great views from the top, and it was very steep and icy, so we decided to cut the trail a bit short. 

We headed down and decided to do the Emerald Pools trail. We took the Kayenta trail to the middle and upper pool, stopping for lunch at the upper pool. We then hiked to the lower pool and on to the Zion Lodge to get out of the rain. To warm up and dry off, we enjoyed a little coffee date at Soleil just outside of the park before dinner. We learned today that Zion means “quiet sanctuary”, and we couldn’t agree more. We also learned that Utah’s slogan is “Life Elevated”, which fit this place perfectly!

In the morning, we took a scenic drive over to Bryce Canyon. 

After getting some information about the trails we wanted to do, we decided on a figure 8 loop including the Queen’s Garden trail, the Peekaboo loop, and the Navajo trail. From the very beginning, the views along this trail were spectacular. 

We couldn’t get over how beautiful this park was, and we quickly decided it was our favourite. The hoodoo spires filling the snow covered canyon were such an incredible backdrop for our day! We ate lunch just before starting the Peekaboo loop, which was perfect because we got into a lot of blowing snow on that trail. We barely saw anyone on the Peekaboo trail, and we loved coming around so many corners to another amazing view. 

With all of the snow, we had trouble getting in and out of our hotel parking lot in Panguitch, but Will managed it!

In each of the parks, we commented on how great it was travelling to these parks at this time of year. The disadvantage of having some trails/roads closed and not being able to complete a couple trails due to weather conditions paled in comparison to the challenges that summer travel would include (extreme heat and TONS of people everywhere). Our suggestion to others would be to travel during the winter, spring or fall, as we couldn’t have imagined hiking in the summer. We also loved all of the people we talked to along the trails we hiked- it’s amazing to hear their travel stories and learn more about the places they are from!