We were in Utah for a cousin’s wedding, but we decided to make it a mini-trip and see lots of the National Parks in the area. Our first full day in Utah was spent in Zion National Park.
We started our visit with a hike up to Weeping Rock, an alcove carved out of the sandstone cliff where water soaks in from above the cliff and slowly drips out. All the alcove walls are covered in hanging gardens of small plants. It was lightly raining, so the water dripping from overhead didn’t make much difference to us at the time.
Next we rode the shuttle to a different part of the park and hiked along the Virgin river to the Lower Emerald Pools, which are formed by a couple small waterfalls. On the way back from the pools we saw a mommy and baby deer, which the boys enjoyed seeing.
We finished our day riding the shuttle to the back of Zion Canyon, and hiking along the river as the canyon narrows. We didn’t make it all the way back to “The Narrows“, which is where the canyon is only 10’s of feet across and you have to walk in the river to go deeper into the gorge, but it was beautiful nonetheless.