Every once in a while you need to get away for a long weekend. One of the best ways we can do that here in Phoenix is to head north into Utah for a couple of days around the Grand Staircase. For this vacation, we went up to Zion Canyon for 3 days, then headed over to Las Vegas for a night a fun before coming home.
Day 1I am writing this on the first full day of a long-weekend vacation. We had originally planned on AM picking me up at about 3:30pm yesterday, but several things conspired against us to prevent that. Instead, we ended up leaving from home at 4pm. The route to Zion we took was the I-17N to Flagstaff, then Hwy. 89 north through page to Utah route 9. The drive didn't start out very promising, as I was listening to traffic on the radio. It turned out that there was some major accident on I-17 about 30 miles north of Phoenix that backed traffic up all the way to the loop 101. Traffic for that stretch of road was moving at an absolute crawl. Unfortunately, there really isn't a good alternate route up to Flagstaff, other than going through Payson (which is out of the way, and was dealing with an even larger backup because of a missed construction deadline). It actually took up 3 1/2 hours to get to Flagstaff, an hour longer than it has ever taken us before. Based on the plan, we would have… |
Day 2After having breakfast at 9am this morning, we checked out of the lodge at 10am and headed over to hike the Emerald Pool trails. The hike started out pretty nice, but quickly started to show us just how out of shape we've gotten. Finally some motivation to start doing cardio every morning again. We also learned pretty quickly that early September is still too hot for hiking in Zion. It was over 90 degrees by 11am, so we were sweating like mad. After finishing the hike (and only taking a few pictures), we took the shuttle down-canyon and did the Pa'rus trail. It is a very easy walk on paved sidewalk, but the scenary is very pretty. About 1:20, we got to the end of the trail, which puts you at the visitor center. We took the shuttle back to the lodge, picked up the car, and headed over to the Novel House Inn. Novel House Inn is a nice bed and breakfast in Springdale which is run by Ross and Norma Clay. We stayed here a couple of years ago in the C.S. Lewis room and were so impressed we… |
Day 3After having yet another amazing breakfast at Novel house Inn, we packed up our backpacks, put on our boots, and headed over to the park. When we got there we purchased an annual pass for all US parks. We'll hopefully get good use of it this year, as we will end up using it at the Volcanos and Haleakala National Parks in Hawaii this year, as well as a couple of the ones closer to home. We got to the head of the Narrows at about 10:15am, which was a little later than we wanted, but still early enough to have a decent day of hiking. At this point we switched over to our water shoes (basically sneakers decided for going in water that drain quickly), stowed the boots in the water-proof backpack, and headed into the water. Since we didn't rent the water hiking boots (special boots with neoprene socks and a better grip on the bottom), we just about froze our feet when we stepped into the 67 degree water. Thankfully, because the outside temperature was about 100 degrees, the water started to… |
Day 4When we woke up in the morning, we took it easy, showered, and headed down for breakfast. While eating another great meal, we started talking to one of the other couples staying at the inn. Tony and Connie were from Las Vegas (Henderson actually) and had come out for a couple of days of rest. We talked with them all through breakfast and for about 1/2 hour to an hour after we were all done. Tony worked for the state mental hospital, and Connie worked for the Henderson Police Department. The entire conversation was very pleasant, and they were really nice people. It was a great way to end our time in Zion, because right after we finished talking with them we headed up to the room to pack and check out. After we checked out, we headed up to Las Vegas for another type of fun. This time we were staying at the MGM Grand, but we hadn't decided where we would head for dinner quite yet. After asking the front desk and concierge a couple of questions, we headed up to the room to get settled… |