After leaving Vegas, we headed to Utah to check out Zion National Park.  Originally we had planned to do this and Bryce Canyon, but things are really far apart in these states!  Also the time zones change, so you randomly lose or gain an hour.  How does anyone know what time it is out here?  When Craig realized we were going to miss out on something from our itinerary, he was pretty bummed.  I was like, hmm…now you know how I felt when we missed the buffet in Vegas…  I’m really compassionate.

Zion was uh-may-zing.

You park in a lot, then take a shuttle to various stops throughout the park.  There are several great trails, and the parks are open 24 hours so you can explore at your own pace.  We did the Emerald Pools trail that connected to another one, making for a (relatively) easy 3 miles total.  The scenery was out of this world:

  
  We ventured around the park a little more, then caught the shuttle back to the visitor lot while a 9 year old girl repeated “The big black bug ate the little black bear” about ten thousand times.  Ugh.  Stop bringing your children, please.  On our way out, we drove up the windy Zion Mt. Carmel highway, which is dangerously scenic– seriously, there’s something around every curve and you could just run off the road and DIE.  We stopped at the Canyon Overlook Trail, which led to an amazing lookout, and since it was so late there was barely anyone there, except for (more) kids that harassed me for going too slowly.  Even though there were like no railings and 1,000 foot drop offs.

 We drove out of Zion to our Air BnB, Larry’s Suite in Purradise.  Screw ever staying in hotels, Air BnB is the way to go.  Larry was super chill, and is also a vegetarian/animal activist, and gave us lots of suggestions of what to do on our drive the next day.  And he apologized for the freak snow storm, even though we didn’t blame him for it. 

We woke up early and grabbed breakfast in the cute town of Kanab.  We would have explored more, but we had reservations for a tour of Antelope Canyon, and couldn’t quite figure out the time situation.  The things you take for granted on the East Coast…

 We ended up being two hours early, so we went to Horseshoe Bend to kill some time.  Also huge and amazing.  There are like no fences in the southwest states…I guess they figure if you do something stupid, it’s your own fault for not respecting the territory.

 Took a tour of the lower canyon, and had a serious/hilarious tour guide named Sitting Buffalo.
 I felt bad because he took awesome pictures for everyone, and probably gets no credit at all.  So I made sure to hashtag “sittingbuffalo” on Instagram…AND HE ADDED ME!  It makes me wish I lived here because I feel like we would be BeStiEzZz 💖.  Oh yeah, and the canyon was pretty cool too:    

Sitting Buffalo explained how it all formed, but I was too busy thinking about what my own Native American name would be to pay close attention.  I’m thinking Sparkle Sunshine?  Or is that a My Little Pony?

Anyway, we went to our next Air BnB, which was owned by Karl who used to be an extreme tour guide.  He suggested we go to a romantic floating restaurant for dinner…uh, hell yea Karl!  Unfortunately (as usual), when we got there it was closed for renovations.  The kid who worked in the visitor center told us they’re closed because they’re transitioning from Pepsi to Coke products.  Yup.  Closed the day we tried to go.  Opening April 1st.  2 days from now.  I’ll just let that resonate.

Tomorrow we head to the Grand Canyon, which I hear is pretty scenic.  I’ll let you know what’s closed there!