Horseshoe Bend & Zion National Park – July 15th & 16th

From the Grand Canyon we drove to the town of Page, and the nearby bend in the Colorado River (which is the river in the Grand Canyon), called Horseshoe Bend for its shape. It was pretty amazing, although a little too windy to get too close to the edge! It was definitely worth the stop by and walk there though! Looked like some people were having fun rafting on the river way below too!

Horseshoe Bend in Page from above (thanks Google!)

Due to the scary wind at the top of the cliff, this was about the best shot we got...

When it can sometimes look like this! (thanks again Google...)

Then we managed to find a drive belt for the car so were prepared if the old one dies when we’re in the middle of nowhere… And headed out of town again before discovering that our car charger for everything had carked it, so we raced back to get another one of those (now needing our US power adaptor for everything even in the car though) before heading out of town again. Passed by Glen Canyon Dam just out of Page, which is the dam at the other end of the Colorado River where it comes from a lake – pretty impressive sight, but we needed to make it to Zion National Park that night and so didn’t stop.

The road into Zion National Park has a Canyon Overlook Trail which we headed down, and saw our first rather spectacular view of one of the canyons in the Zion National Park – wow!

First view of Zion National Park, from the Canyon Overlook Trail

We got into the campground and found that all of the campsites were taken, and the manager was nice and let us squeeze into a handicap only campsite, at around 10pm (we didn’t realise that Utah is an hour in front of everywhere else we’d been!) – so cooked our dinner and went to bed very late, before not being able to sleep – we saw a coyote (we think, it was pretty dark, but they were some serious eyes glinting in the dark!) in the bush next to our van, and in the middle of our hot and sleepless (almost) night there was a massive male deer eating from the tree in front of the van, so that was pretty cool!! We saw some more smaller ones in the morning too :)

Mule deer in the campsite

We got up at around sunrise to catch the early shuttle bus (you can’t drive through the whole park, so there’s a free shuttle instead) and walk up to Angel’s Landing – the scariest hike I’ve ever done! The walk is up, up and up a series of switchbacks called Walter’s Wiggles, until you get to Scout’s Lookout, looking over a pretty impressive view of the Zion Canyon!

However, the scary bit was yet to come – walking over and up a skinny but very very high ridge to ‘Angel’s Landing’, the top of which is over 1400 feet above the valley floor – so over the ridge there is an 800 foot drop on one side (about 250m) and a 1200 foot drop (about 350m) on the other. NOT cool. So it was a pretty massive achievement for me being pretty scared of heights (did it not so much for the view, but to make myself do it…) – there were some pretty seriously hairy parts, and it was not necessarily my favourite moment! We took a fair bit of time to climb the ridge (over the horrifying drop parts, then up the even scarier steep parts which still had the massive drop offs!) and then relaxed at the top for a while – the squirrels and chipmunks up there are SO cute! It was surprisingly MUCH better on the way down, unlike what I was imagining! Maybe because we couldn’t directly see the massive drops…

Angel's Landing looking deceivingly non frightening

The lovely switchbacks that are part of the way up - Walter's Wiggles

The part that gets super scary, heading over and up that ridge! (zoom in to see the hikers going up)

Not so much a happy camper at this time... But man was that chain appreciated!

Gigantic drop down BOTH sides - lovely!

Made it to the top!!!

Adorable tiny little chipmunk at the top - one of many :)

The view back up the canyon from the top of Angel's Landing

Looking further up the canyon from the top

The ridge ready to be crossed again on the way back down...

Somehow much more bearable on the way down, unlike what we expected!

Anyhow that was our morning, glad we left super early so there were less people (NOT fun to pass people on that trail!). Then Lawrie had a sleep while I wandered through the gift shop, and we had a quick trip on The Narrows trail, which is an awesome walk through the Virgin River bed, mainly through the water. It maybe wasn’t the best day for it as we were pretty worn out from the intense walk in the hot morning, and there were SO many people in the water as it was pretty warm by then! So we didn’t go up nearly as far as we planned, but we enjoyed it all the same!

The Court of the Patriarchs - Abraham, Isaac & Jacob - further up the canyon

Part of The Narrows

The Narrows

On our way out of Zion National Park we finally saw some bighorn sheep, which was cool! Still didn’t see any mountain lions/cougars, but sort of glad for that all the same! Oh and we also disovered how cool hummingbirds are!! SO tiny and SO quick, and they just hover in the air for a couple of seconds, long enough to realise it’s not just a big insect! No photos of that though!

Bighorn sheep just outside the canyon

Majestic bighorn ram looking down on everything

We stopped by Coral Pink Sand Dunes state park on our way (ish) to our campsite at the tiny ‘town’ of Glendale near Zion National Park (had to stay somewhere with a shower after the hot day and walks!) – didn’t go into the park as it was raining by then and we found an overlook where we could see most of the park anyway – pretty cool colour for sand! I would probably call it orange rather than coral pink though…

So we had a much needed relaxing and long sleep on a much cooler night, and didn’t do much in the morning…

Lawrie at the Coral Pink Sand Dunes

Our lovely quiet camping spot for the night