Day 27 > 30 - Water Did This

DATE: Thursday MARCH 24th

TIME: 11:55pM MST

LOCATION: springdale ut

So when last we spoke, I was in Colorado. We began out trip towards Utah pretty early and got on the road proper around 10:30am local time. The first two hours of the drive through western Colorado was through what I can best describe as alpine tundra. Huge rolling mountains, cold cliff faces, tall pines littered with snow. It looked like traveling through western Eastmarch for any Elder Scrolls fans. This climate perplexed me because I was (correctly) under the impression that Arches National Park was in a mesa. Around hour 3 of driving, the landscape started to change. The stone began to turn orange, grass was replaced by sand, and yet the snow remained. I never thought I would see Westworld style canyon walls covered with snow, and yet that is exactly what we saw. The drive through western CO was probably the most dramatic change in climate and biome we have seen thus far, and just so happens to be the coolest. I don’t think I have ever taken so many pictures on a travel day. The drive all told took us around 7 hours to complete and I documented the majority of it. Today is going to probably be my largest photo dump yet so make sure to take a look at that. Now, lets talk national parks.

So our drive landed us in Moab UT just down the road from Arches national park. Before checking in we went into the park to check it out. Notably, we missed the visitor center being open. Ill return to that. From talking with my dad, Arches is apparently the younger of the canyon lands compared to Zion, Bryce Canyon and the Grand Canyon. But that didn’t make it any less scenic. We got to drive through essentially the entire park, only missing our on Delicate arch regrettably. But hey, always have to leave something to come back for. Most of our time was spent at Windows, a huge hole in the middle of the canyon wall. It was a relatively short walk to get to it and we had a ton of fun taking pictures there. The size of the thing was absolutely massive. Not only that, it created a very intense wind tunnel right at its mouth. Even I was getting blown around. We took turns driving so we could both see the park, I was taking pictures nearly the entire time I was in the passenger seat. We made another stop at some overlook closer to the entrance of the park and took some more pictures. All in all, Arches was absolutely beautiful. I can’t recommend it enough.

We got up and got checked out pretty quick the next morning. Our goal was to quickly stop by the visitor center we had missed in order to get out passports stamped. This however turned out to be quite difficult. When we arrived at around 11am, the park was apparently filled and they had blocked off the road, despite the fact that the visitor center was basically empty. We were determined to get out passports stamped. We tried walking one of the bike paths, but were thwarted by a barbed wire fence. Deniz ran back to the car and I kept looking for a way through with no luck. Eventually I walked back up to the highway that passes by the center and Deniz picked me up. We decided to take turns dropping each other off just at the blocked entrance so that person could walk to the visitor center. Unfortunately this turned out to be kinda difficult because of all the people hovering around waiting for the park to open back up. It worked out well enough with my, I got in and got out without much issue. But when we swapped and I dropped Deniz off, things got messy. There was no parking left at the entrance to the park so I had to loop back to the visitor center early. I pulled off to the side of the road with some other cars for a few min, but then a park ranger came through with his siren blaring and started arguing with the car two ahead of me. I chose to dip out of that situation and pulled into the main road. But after going around the round about by the blocked path, traffic had stopped. The park ranger was still arguing with this guy. I then saw ANOTHER park ranger start walking towards the open gate with some traffic cones. I shot Deniz a text and told him to get out quick cause I thought they were going to close the entrance entirely. Which the luckily didn’t. When the other car finally stopped arguing and pulled away traffic started to move again. I was able to make one more loop back and swipe Deniz up. All told, it took us around 90min just to get in and get our passports stamped. Worth it.

The first leg of our drive yesterday was to Bryce Canyon. We honestly didn’t know much about this place, only that it came recommended by my dad who hadn’t been able to go there previously. When we arrived we were greeted by a place called Red Canyon. This place looked EXACTLY like Big Thunder Mountain in Disney. We took a lot of pictures on the short leg of that drive. Also somewhere along the way I lost my super nice pocket knife which sucked. When we eventually made it to Bryce, we were pretty confused. We knew it was a canyon from the name, but the entrance seemed more like Sebago Lake. Lots of trees and small ponds. Not at all what we were expecting. So we decided to just wing it and start driving. The first turn off was to a place called Sunrise Vista. We drove that way and eventually came upon a small path through the woods. This path led to an amazing vista looking down into the Canyon. We had found it! We took lots of pictures there, but honestly I don’t think we got the most from it. This place was absolutely massive and most of the trails were more of a hike than we were prepared for at the time. And those that weren’t were horse paths. The place was seriously beautiful, but I think it is a location I will need to come back to to really get the most of it. Also the visitor center there was closed and I didn’t get my stamp. So I need to come back anyway lol.

The second leg of the drive was to Zion. And let me tell you right now, there is fucking nothing between Bryce and Zion. Like I was expecting nothing, but this was seriously nothing. Just nothing but empty plains, small mountains and sleepy towns. Which would have been great had it not been dark and we had not been hungry. We got pretty loopy towards the end but eventually we passed into Zion proper. The drive through Zion in the pitch black was pretty interesting. We could just barely make out the shapes of something in the darkness, but not much. We went through the long tunnel which felt like forever in the darkness but eventually made it to the hotel. We checked in, got some dinner, then went to sleep. Ready to explore the next day.

I had been excited for Zion since the beginning of the trip. It was truly a foreign location to me and I was not disappointed. This place was AMAZING. I had never seen such huge mountains and cliffs in my entire life. Everything was so huge it almost didn’t even look real. Our first few hours in the park were spent at the visitor center getting swag and stamps, and driving the main road that we had taken the night before. I gotta say, that road is so much more manageable during the day lol. And much prettier too. I took a whole fucking lot of photos today so make sure you check them out. After our initial drive we headed back into town to grab some food at a local cafe, then headed back into the park to the the shuttle on the Scenic Route. Apparently during shuttle season this route is closed to normal cars so we had to take the actual shuttle. Our first stop was at the patriarchs, 3 huge mountains along the road all named for biblical characters. Very pretty. The second stop was at the Zion Lodge, which looked beautiful. Across the road from the lodge/hotel was the Emerald Pool trail. We decided to take a walk down it. The trail gave us a lot of really beautiful vistas but the main attraction was the water pools. It was so incredibly cool around them as the water fell from the cliff sides creating a beautiful mist. I stuck my head under one of the water falls and it felt amazing. There was natural clay everywhere from all the moisture in the air. The lower pond was pretty cool but we decided to take another branch of the trail further up the cliff to Middle pond. Also equally as beautiful with an even better vista. From there we took a connecting trail much higher than the one we took initially back to the hotel and shuttle. All in all the hike took us around 2 hours instead of the estimated 30 min for the initial trail. But it was well worth it. After the hike we road the bus down the rest of the stops then back to the visitors center, where we got into our car and headed back to the hotel.

We chilled out for a few hours after returning, Deniz decided to clean the car and managed to find my missing knife which was very exciting to me. Around 10pm we decided to head back into the park to go star gazing. My cousin Matt had told me Zion has one of the darkest skies which is perfect for seeing the stars. We sat on one of the pull offs in the middle of the scenic valley for around 40min just looking up at the stars. It was beautiful and frankly none of the pictures I took will do it justice. Its just one of those things you need to see for yourself

So tomorrow we are leaving Springdale and headed to the Grand Canyon. Very exciting indeed. Ill try to remember to write up another post tomorrow. I have heard some have been anxiously awaiting my posts which warms my heart. Im glad Im not just yelling out into the void and that people are enjoying the trip along with me. One thing Im curious about, do you guys prefer daily updates even if they are short or boring (Im looking at you travel days). OR do you prefer these longer multiday recaps. Leave a comment, let me know.

Thats all for now, stay safe out there

Signing off

-H