Boarding the bus

Zion National Park has, like two other NP’s, a free shuttle bus system. You can safely ride the bus from the local town to the park, transfer to the park’s line and travel inside the park with those buses. All free!

We did just that to and in Zion, and I can tell you: it’s great. There’s no parking drama as the car stays at the hotel and inside the park buses are on a 6 to 10 minute schedule so there are no long waiting lines.
Besides, today the buses are very convenient, as I parked our car in a place where the lawn sprinklers were hurting the car. So early in the morning we woke up yo find our car covered in white stuff, which wouldn’t come off easily.
Luckily, after buying some bathroom cleaner (!) we got rid of the majority of it on the windows so we were able to see out clearly.

Zion NP is a great place to be, as beautiful as it is. I would recommend renting special water shoes to hike through the river to a place called The Narrows. This is where the gorge gets so small that the river fills up the place from wall to wall. We didn’t and kind of regret that.

On the way to a viewpoint called Weeping Rock, we found ourselves confronted with the only venomous snake in the park, the Diamondback rattlesnake. It just sat there minding its own business. I’m pretty sure it knew we were there but it simply didn’t bother to slither away out of our sight. The encounter with this majestic creature left us wondering how safe the trip really was…

Zion NP has a really interesting geology, and is part of the Grand Staircase. This means that all earth’s layers are fully exposed and that Zion’s oldest layer is Grand Canyon youngest layer. Bryce Canyon’s layers are even younger than Zion’s!

Finally, after a long and very hot day filled with scenic views and short hikes, we returned to our lush Western hotel to sleep in our timber built bed. Tomorrow the trip to Vegas!