Another spectacular canyon

This one you do from the bottom as opposed to that grand canyon in Arizona but the effect is the same. Every view ends up seeming routinely spectacular.

Today we visited Zion National Park. Spectacular.

The main canyon is available only by shuttle bus. The bus route originates from the visitor center just inside the western entrance to the park. On the way to the park there is a PERMANENT sign that says that the visitor parking lot is full from 10am to 3pm daily. We arrived at 9am.

Our plan was to ride the shuttle to the last available stop at the head of the canyon and then work our way back. This made our first stop the Temple of Sinawava. Most of the features in the canyon, and in fact, the canyon itself were named by persons of faith giving a certain slant to the names related strongly to the faith of those who were early enough in settlement by Europeans to be given naming rights.

The canyon is in a sandstone terrain, the remnants of what the interpretive material calls one of the largest sand dune terrains in the history of the world, similar in character to today's Sahara but probably larger.  Given enough time and enough sand eventually you get a massive sandstone terrain.  Introduce a river and eventually you are going to have a canyon.

That's what happened here.   This view is from the Temple of Sinawava shuttle stop up canyon towards the end of the main park.

We were determined to take several of the trails.  But with 100 degree temperatures looming later in the day our selection criterion for which trails we would attempt required that the  trail be rated by the park guide as "Easy" and that they be short.  Our first trail was the Riverside Walk beginning at the Temple shuttle stop.

At the end of the one mile Riverside Walk is the entrance to The Narrows.  The Narrows is described as 16 miles long, up to 2,000 feet deep and at times only 20 to 30 feet wide.  The guide goes on to say that the trip is not to be underestimated.  Hiking the Narrows means hiking in the river.  At least 60 percent of the hike is spent wading, walking, and sometimes swimming in the river.  There is no maintained trail because the route is the river.  The current is swift, the water may be cold and deep, and the rocks underfoot are slippery.  Flash flooding and hypothermia are constant dangers.

The trail begins.

We turned back towards the main park.  Here is Ms. Bend in the River at a bend in the river.

And here is today's wildlife photo.  And yes, that mule deer was as close to me as he appears in the photo.  I utilized none of the telephoto characteristics available to me with the variable lens on my camera.  I was standing on the trail, he was standing on the wall above the trail, within perhaps 15 or so feet of where I was standing.

We got back on the shuttle to head to the next down canyon stop.  The bus driver spotted yet another mule deer along the road as we rode.  He asked over his speaker system if anyone on the bus knew how many kinds of deer there were in the park.

He provided the answer:  four.

Yes, dear.
No, dear.
John Deere.
And mule deer.

As he himself added, thousands of comedians out of work and we were stuck there with him.

The next stop was Big Bend.  Here is the rock formation that creates the big bend.  The river comes from frame right and turns to follow the contour of this monolith towards frame left.

The attraction here, though is the view of The Organ, The Great White Throne, and The Angel's Landing.  That is they in the photo from left to right.

The next shuttle stop was Weeping Rock.  Here is a view of those same three monuments seen above as seen from a perspective about half a mile further down stream and slightly around the corner.  The big difference from a photography perspective is that we have significantly altered the sun angle.

The Weeping Rock Trail is described as short but steep.  It leads to a spot where the rock appears to weep.  There are hundreds of feet of sandstone layers.  Surface water at the top of the canyon percolates down into the rock and descends slowly through the layers until it reaches an impermeable layer.  At that point the water is forced laterally and emerges on the side of the canyon as if the rock were weeping.  It is an impressive effect.

The next stop was the Grotto.  This  isn't really the Grotto but it is an interesting formation visible from the Grotto shuttle stop.  The lighter colored sandstone formation has eroded into arches high up in the side of the canyon above the more reddish colored lower layers of rock.

We walked the Grotto Trail next which was an alternative to the shuttle bus down to the next stop, Zion Lodge.  The trail itself and most of the views available were unremarkable but we emerged to this view back up canyon  visible at the lodge.

We had lunch at the lodge and then ventured up Lower Emerald Pool Trail. It was starting to get hot.  These rocks are not weeping.  The impermeable layer here is enough farther up the wall of the canyon that the water courses over this ledge as a mini-waterfall, dropping into three small pools.  Picturesque.

From underneath the waterfall.

We made our way back to the shuttle and rode down to the Court of the Patriarchs.  Here we had our final hike, a trail described by the guide as another short but steep.

These peaks are named for significant figures from the Book of Mormon.  From left to right, Abraham Peak, Isaac Peak, Mount Moroni (not well known to non-Mormons but apparently a significant figure in the Book of Mormon) and Jacob Peak.

Here is a final look back up canyon from our final shuttle stop, Canyon Junction.

This evening the guide book came through with a very nice Mexican restaurant on the other side of Saint George.

We are getting a little saturated with spectacular rocks and hot days.  Tomorrow has another predicted high of at least near 100 and therefore looms as a non-desert day.  It appears that we will end up seeking whatever tourism sites we can locate in Saint George.  A sign on the freeway promises dinosaur tracks at Johnson Farms at exit 10.  We are at exit 8 so who knows?

The mother of the young family we met at the eclipse last evening asked the usual question of whether we knew when the next one would be.  This got me thinking about the last one I had seen and sure enough there is a Wikipedia article about the total eclipse of the sun visible in northwestern Wisconsin on June 30, 1954.  I have vague memories of what we could see after Aunt Marian loaded us into her car to haul us to what she deemed an appropriate viewing location.  Yesterday's events fail to even approach what I remember from 1954.  I am now inspired to try to find a total eclipse as the whole annular thing was so much less impressive.