Road Trip Daily

Kolob Canyons was added to Zion Park twenty years ago and is known for its radiant orange canyons. We arrived late morning to discover much cooler weather and high 20 mph winds in this higher elevation area. We knew we would be a bit cold until the sun came up fully but pushed on anyway. We drove up the five mile road to an opening revealing the glorius canyon wall (pic 1&2) and parked at the end of the road for a short hike to a high overlook of the Utah and Arizona valleys (pic). Our second hike was a bit longer and descended 800 ft down into the valley shown in the first photo. It really began to warm up as we climbed back up!  Our final hike was what I thought was the popular Taylor creek trail up to a double arch but ended up being a unmaintained but very good trail up another finger of a canyon. After a climb up a sandy brush area the trail opened to a magical meadow with green grass and orange sand trails carving through large pine trees, all the time surrounded by high ...

Zion is named after the serene and safe sense of spiritual and physical home that the valley and canyons evoke and this feeling dominates all time while you are here.   Unless you climb up to Angels Landing and safe and serene is replaced by fear and exileration! After spending an entire day on Monday finalizing the car purchase, fixing the coolant leak and picking up uncle Page and cousin Roman after their 5 hour flight, we drove to Zion and arrived as the sun was setting.  We took a 30 minute night hike and settled in to our beds at the rustic Zion lodge in the heart of the valley. Start strong was the goal for day one at Zion and we accomplished that goal and more.  We awoke  at 7am , showered, had a big breakfast and then hit the trail head.  We climbed up the canyon side, to a shaded flat reprieve section and then up a series of steep switchbacks (pic) to get to the flat overlook just before the steep and narrow chain section of Angels Landing summit c...