DAY 9 – Springdale (Zion) (0 miles driven, 8.89 miles walked)
It was a far more relaxed start to the day today as we weren’t travelling. This allowed us to ‘Facetime’ home (other video calling services are available). I remember the days when we would send home postcards and hope that they arrived home before you did. Now you can have a realtime conversation and make your loved ones back home jealous by showing them what they are missing in real time!
When we left the hotel it was a chilly 12 degrees and so there was the dilemma as to whether to take a jumper or not safe in the knowledge that come midday it would not be required. Helen elects to take her jumper but will have to carry it later. I don’t and freeze to begin with but look smug later on!
We board the shuttle bus and hadn’t got very far before we join a long queue of cars waiting to get in to park. Fortunately there is a bus lane half way along and so we sped up and got to the park in a timely fashion.
Helen had mapped out an itinerary for the day and we started by getting the bus as far as you could go to the Temple of Sinawava. From here there was a riverside walk along to what is called The Narrows. It was a beautiful walk albeit a bit chilly for those that had elected to leave their jumpers behind! The Narrows are exactly as they sound but can only be reached by paddling through the river and we weren’t equipped to deal with that – maybe next time.
Much is made of how volotile the rock is here and there are regular rock falls. One trapped a group of tourists on the wrong side of it for three days before it was cleared. The Emerald pools path was once washed away and took 11 years to rebuild it.
We then took the bus back in two hops. First stopping off about half way and walked a path to the next stop. Along here were many deer and long horned sheep. Finally we got off at stop three and walked the Pa’rus Trail back to the starting point. This trail is flat and follows the river closely and is full of lush vegitation with the soaring mountains on either side. I think that is was my favourite part of the park.
Finally, we went slightly back on ourselves to take a look at some petroglyphs that had been pointed out to us by one of the bus drivers. There weren’t very many – pretty much what you can see in the photo below. There are others in the park but you aren’t told where those are because, of course, people cannot be trusted not to add their own to these ancient marking. Idiots!
