The last shuttle stop on the line is in a natural amphitheater called the Temple of Sinawava, carved out of Zion Canyon by the Virgin River.
From here you can follow the paved riverwalk for about a mile between the canyon walls.
I think my phone and my GoPro were competing to see who could do the least amount of justice to this spectacular scenery.
The pavement stops at the mouth of the Narrows, where the river itself becomes the trail. This is as far as we could go without getting our feet wet.
So we headed back.
I like the “hanging gardens” that grow straight from the weeping rocks.
By the time we got back to the shuttle, the afternoon was turning to evening.
We left the park through the South entrance.
Ideally it’s a two-hour drive from Zion to Bryce Canyon National Park. But the traffic was so bad on the normal route that Google took us on a more circuitous detour via Cedar City. In better weather it only would have added about thirty minutes to that ideal drive time. But the snow was starting to roll in for real, and the roads were getting slick.
That drive was so scenic that I wish we could have seen it in the daytime. Snow falling on evergreen-forested mountains as pretty as a Christmas card. Really lovely. We stopped for the night at a snow-covered rest stop not far from the Park entrance.
Gentle reader, it was cold. Temps down in the mid-teens, and with the camper shell missing a window it felt like sleeping outside. I’ve been saying I need to buy a proper sleeping bag, but I think this trip was the motivation I needed to finally do that. Definitely before my next winter trip. Brr.
More to come!
An Invincible Summer 