Devin drove until Salt Lake area, and then Kami drove for a little while. Around 2:30am Kami started to get really tired so I took over, even though we only had about 30 more minutes left to go, so we thought. We were following what the GPS unit told us to go and we ended up having to go through the park to get to our campsite. My leg of the journey to Zion was quite entertaining as things just didn’t seem to go perfectly, but I guess we weren’t to Zion yet so perfection had not been reached.
THE FATE OF A POOR LITTLE BUNNY: So I’m driving along while meanwhile what I thought was a little bunny was in the middle of the road and it was just hopping aimlessly around. Upon closer arrive to this innocent little bunny I realized it was not little and it was not a bunny it was definitely a giant Jack Rabbit! I screamed out “get out of the way little bunny.” Well, that poor rabbit’s life ended that night as I toppled over him. Without stopping to have a proper burial for this poor creature, I continued on as we were all excited to get to Zion and sleep, guess that wasn’t so Zion-like of us.
Finally reaching the park we arrived at the gates and there was a huge sign that said ROAD CLOSED and a construction man standing by it. He told us that the road would not open until 8am. With no other choice we turned around and just pulled off to the side of the road and slept in the car. What an adventure!!!
FRIDAY, AUGUST 20
LET ZION REJOICE (D&C 97:19): The next morning we continued on our journey and actually made it to Zion and we were definitely rejoicing when we finally found our campsite! We quickly set up camp and then headed into the park to begin our adventures starting with Angle’s Landing. This was the most amazing hike ever! It was an upward incline the entire way and once you get to 0.5 miles left you have to climb a ledge with a chain to get to the top. It was such a pretty view from up top too and totally worth hiking in 102 degree weather. As you can see we were pretty sweaty after that.
Other pictures of the Angle's Landing hike
Once we finished Angle’s Landing we went back to our camp, had lunch, and got things ready for that night. Then we decided to go back to the park and find another hike with some kind of water, mainly because Kami and I felt like we smelt really bad and wanted to bathe off. But before that Devin, Bryce, and I had to enjoy a little something something…of course ice cream!!! Ok off that side note, we ended up hiking Emerald’s pool. You’re not supposed to swim in this water but you can definitely sit underneath this little waterfall that dripped down from the rocks. So Kami, Bryce, and I decided to take a “shower” because our campsite definitely didn’t have any bathrooms or anything to get clean because it was a free campsite. There was a river running next to it but since it had rained the previous days it was all muddy, kind of looked like chocolate milk. Anyways so we stood under the water drips to try and get clean and smell better. It helped a little…Kami and I ended up hopping the railing to get under the bigger waterfall since it was more like a shower.
We were all dead tired by the end of Friday so we went back to camp and started our fire and made our tin foil dinners. Actually I should say Bryce and Devin started the fire and made the tin foil dinners. Kami and I ended up reading our scriptures during the dinner preparations and that just calls for disaster. Being tired + reading scriptures = sleeping for me. So yes I ended up falling asleep and was suddenly awoken by shaking of the tent and Devin telling us our dinner was ready. Not really wanting to eat, but knowing they would be delicious, I woke Kami up and we went out by the fire to eat our dinners.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 21
Saturday morning we got up and headed into the park to hike the narrows. This was a really cool hike too! A lot different than Angle’s Landing since most the time we are walking in water. We hiked for 6 hours over slippery rocks, sand, and land and I am happy to say I only fell a couple of times and it wasn’t until the way back when we were going with the current. Almost face planted one time but that’s beside the point. Needless to say by the end of the hike I was ready to get out of the water and walk on even ground.
Since we still had a lot of time that night after our hike we went to the park and threw around a Frisbee for awhile and showered off in their sprinklers. Pretty ridiculous but you got to do what you got to do. We didn’t want to be all smelly and grouse for church the next day.
Church on Sunday was so great! Definitely a Zion ward! We went to a little ward in Springdale, just outside of the park. It was a really small ward and mainly consisted of older people. There was even a 96 year old woman, but they were the friendliest ward I have ever attended.
After church we were on our way back to Idaho but took quite a few pit stops along the way. What was supposed to be an 8 hour drive, took us 11 hours or so because of all our stops, but I was grateful because one of the stops was at my grandma and grandpa Hendrickson’s. It was so good to see them and Travis’s family. And Amber and Alan ended up coming out to Bear River City so I got to see them, what a great day! I could have stayed longer but we needed to head back to Rexburg in time for curfew and we still had one more stop to make along the way. Although we were in the car all day, it actually went by pretty fast because of all the stops we made.
As soon as I got home I took a nice long shower and crawled into bed knowing that it was going to be hard to get up the next morning for work, but going to Zion was totally worth it!
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