I took a little hiatus, but I’m baaaaack! Everyone has their uncharacteristic moments (or is that just me?) and there was a moment last year when I decided to explore the Nature Girl facet of my personality. I know, I know – it’s an extremely tiny facet, but still there, and makes itself known from time to time.
I’ll be perfectly honest and admit that I picked Zion National Park after running across one too many amazing photos on social media. I had to go see for myself! Plus, I’d never been to Utah before. So I rounded up some friends, got a national parks pass, and set about planning a weekend to Utah.
Rarely do I deliberately choose a location and dates and then buy a ticket to get there (this is the most expensive way to go somewhere ), so I was prepared to pay a little bit more to fly into the closest airport and stay nearby. However, when I started researching prices and realized what these fools wanted ($400 round trip versus $90 for Vegas, plus hotel costs were surprisingly high, and I still would have had to drive an hour), I decided this was just stupidity of the highest order given how close it is to Las Vegas (about 3 hours driving) and how easy it is to travel hack a Las Vegas trip. So, I turned my Zion National Park trip into a Vegas trip containing a Zion Day trip, got my $90 flight, a 4-day car rental for $111, and a 4-day hotel reservation at the new-ish Park MGM in Las Vegas for $227 plus a $50 food credit, and set out to see what Zion had to offer.
Park MGM
This was my first stay at the Park MGM, and despite the great deal I got through the Mlife program – comped room, only pay resort fees, and a $50 dining credit – I wouldn’t look forward to staying there again (I went back last weekend with fingers crossed that it had improved, and sadly, it had not – though the king room is infinitely better than the double). Even though it was just recently renovated, my room kind of resembled a renovated motel room., and the color scheme was pretty awful. The stay itself wasn’t too bad, but compared to other options on the strip, this was a huge step down. It’s possible I just got a bad room, but if they’re putting status-wielding casino comps into their worst rooms, well…I want no part of that lol. Economically though, it was a solid choice, since 1) they were offering comps on weekend days, 2) we had a maintenance issue that the property made right by waiving our resort fees, and 3) I won enough money in the casino to cover the rest of my portion of the trip.
Road Trip
Bright and early on Saturday, my soror Maria and I left the hotel to go swoop our other soror Jelly from her apartment before striking out for our mini roadtrip. As we got closer, the scenery became more and more dramatic. The one thing I didn’t account for was the 1-hour time difference between Las Vegas and Utah. I’m pretty detail-oriented and didn’t realize I’d missed this until we were an hour away from the park and noticed the clocks had jumped forward an hour. I was so mad! I hate unwelcome surprises, and this meant we had woken up at a terrible hour (and I loathe early rising on weekends. well. every day, but still) and still arrived at the park well after it opened.
It looked pretty crowded, so we paid $20 for parking outside the park and caught the shuttle in. In hindsight, we probably should’ve just sucked up the extra wait and used my annual pass to admit the entire car instead of each of us individually.
Nature Nature Nature
We entered at the south entrance (closest to Las Vegas; there’s another entrance to the north, closer to Salt Lake City) , and Zion has a great shuttle system that will drop you at the different trail heads. It seemed that generally the stops closer to the entrance were near the less strenuous trails, while the ones located deeper into the park were for more experienced hikers – hikers with gear. I was intrigued by a trail called The Narrows, located off the last shuttle stop, and I’d love to see it in person but a wet suit is suggested in certain weather and honestly it sounds like something I’d meet my end endeavoring to see, so I will leave it to the folks in better shape, with better training, and actual hiking gear.
One of Many Fordings of The Narrows in Zion National Park from Ben Branch on Vimeo.
Yeahhhh like…no.
Lower Emerald Pool Trail
A lot of the trails were closed due to recent rains, so we started at Zion Lodge shuttle stop with the Lower Emerald Pool Trail, which the park has categorized as an easy hike. As one of the trails that was a relatively simple matter to get to, we were in the company of a lot of other people, but it was a stunning introduction to the park and the scenery.
Weeping Rock Trail
One of the shortest trails in the park, this was maybe a 10 minute walk up a pretty steep incline. It leads to a cool observation point & nice shade under a huge rock that was…well, weeping. Standing under a dripping rock was a huge relief in the hot weather.
East Mesa Trail
I thought view from Weeping Rock was awesome until we went on the next, more difficult trail, and were rewarded with vistas like this.
We followed the East Mesa Trail for about half a mile, enjoying stunning views of Hidden Canyon before turning around to make our way out of the park. The massive red cliffs never got old, and the sheer size of everything made for an awesome sense of being insignificant in the presence of such impressive natural beauty.
Due to the weather – a lot of the trails were closed due to unsafe conditions like flooding or rock slides – and also our limited time, we didn’t get to explore as much of the park as we’d hoped. Before heading home, we stopped at the Castle Dome Cafe for some much needed food, as well as some of the roadside souvenir stands on the way back to the main road. Though there were time constraints, I don’t regret making it a day trip, and hopefully I’ll be able to use my parks pass again before it expires!
