Zion National Park is one of the most popular national parks in United States. It is located at Southwest corner of Utah state and has attracted thousands of visitors each year. It is known for its breathtaking canyon view and the hike in the Narrow. Currently, visitors are not allowed to drive their own vehicle into Zion Canyon and must take shuttle bus. The reservation ticket for shuttle bus is no longer required but still need to ride the shuttle bus into the park.
We planned to spend 1.5 days at Zion. We arrived at Springdale just outside of the park the night before. We had shuttle bus reservation ticket for tomorrow morning at 6AM. The hotel front desk told us we should be good to park our car at the visitor center parking lot since 6AM is still quite early.
The next morning we left the hotel at 5:30AM. As we approached the park, there were already so many cars on the road in front of us! Then we saw the road sigh indicating the parking lot was already full! We were shocked! However, we still drove to visitor center parking lot and found that there were still quite a lot of parking space. The sigh was quite misleading but we could imagine the parking lot to be full around 6:30AM.
We then went to the shuttle bus stop and it was crazy. The line waiting for the shuttle was extremely long. Since we have reservation ticket, we had the priority to board the shuttle. If we didn't have the reservation, we probably have to wait for another 2 hours before getting onto the bus.
The first thing we did was Angels Landing of course and that was where everyone else is coming. This is a must do hike when visiting Zion since it offers an amazing view over the canyon. As we come back down on the trail, we saw a long line up at the trail head with people waiting to do this climb.
We then took the bus and headed to the Narrows. The Narrows is a 9 miles long hike. The first mile is just on the river side and easy for people to hike. Then people must switch on gears to hike in the water and must hike with a stick to measure the depth of the water. We were not prepared for this and thus we did not do this hike unfortunately. However, we did see severals deers along the river side.
Then later in the afternoon, we took the shuttle bus to Zion Lodge and did hike on Emerald Pools Trail. This was an interesting trail with scenery of small water falls and pools of water that offers nice breeze of wind. However, we were pretty exhausted due to the excessive heat in the afternoon.
The next day we left hotel early at 6AM and drove to East Mesa. To get to East Mesa, we drove through the Zion Mountain Camel Highway. The view was quite scenic. Once we get to East Mesa, we did the Observation Point hike. This was a great hike that offers the same breathtaking view as Angels Landing. The view was simply amazing.
Overall, we enjoyed Zion very much and would definitely visit again next time. Next time we would definitely be prepared with gears to hike in the water and do the Narrows.
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