Zion Pictures

After baking at the Valley of Fire we headed to Utah and Zion National Park.  We were hoping it would be cooler and I guess it was but only by 3 or 4 degrees. I didn't really know what to expect. I had spent time researching the first half of the trip but didn't really spend any time on the back half.  Of course it had beautiful scenery but we've seen a lot of amazing things on the trip and I might be taking it for granted a little bit.  I had to take a step back and really try to pay attention to appreciate what a spectacular place it really was. 

The drive there was another scorcher and we worried about overheating the truckster.  We got our first engine light of the trip right before we pulled into Zion so that was fun.  I had them pull and clear the code when I got the oil changed and it's something with the fuel pump.  Hopefully it just got too hot, everything seems to run fine yet so we're hoping it doesn't come back and it'll make it until we get home.  Stay tuned to see how that turns out.

It was 110 degree heat while we were there so hiking was limited to the morning and we didn't take any long trails the first day.  Then we hiked the narrows the seconds day, well technically hiked up to and just inside the narrows but it looked pretty much the same as what we walked all day, really wasn't as narrow as I expected.  That must be upstream more.  Overall it was a 5 hour hike up and back so that was enough for us. On the way up stream we worried about hypothermia as Marcus got pretty chilled and needed to be carried for a ways to keep him out of the water.  Then on the way back we had to worry about heat exhaustion as we were running out of water and it was getting really hot out.  Lucky we were in the river and we took some of the deeper routes through to keep everyone cool.  It was an awesome hike and I'd highly recommend. 

Here are the pictures from our time in Zion.

 

Our Campsite at the Watchman Campground in Zion

Waterfall on the emerald pools trail

Hanging Gardens

 

Sam trying not to overheat

Virgin river by our campsite, an escape from the heat and the boys favorite place to be.

Lucas floating down the rapids

Starting out on the river trail to get to the Narrows

 

 

Ready to begin the real trail

From here it's in the river

Except it wasn't all in the river luckily there were a few dry banks to get out and warm up

Waterfall

This rock was a landmark with a name but I don't remember it

Look a named rock

This is when we made it officially into the Narrows proper.  Only went in a little ways and there was reportedly a spot up to peoples chest so we turned it around.

View above us

Warmer so willing to get into some of the deeper water

Taking a swim to cool off

Loved the hike

Now lets get out of here and find some lunch

Valley of Fire Pictures

Our next stop after California was a night stop over in the Valley of Fire state park in Nevada.  We drove through Las Vegas and we all got to see some of the interesting casinos quickly as we went by on the interstate.  The heat was insane and we had to turn the air off for a few stretches to let the car cool down.  From there it wasn't much further to the park.  It was so hot I've never been in anything like it.  The park was very interesting and the campsites where huge and not many people crazy enough to camp (maybe 6 other campers there with us) so a nice change from San Clemente. It was just too bad we couldn't leave the trailer for long without melting.  We are not built for the heat.  We were close to Lake Mead so we sought out the nearest swimming hole we could find. I didn't realize until we got there why I received the weird look from the Ranger when I inquired about swimming nearby, with an answer Hmm, ahh, probably Echo bay would be your best bet it's about 12 miles into the Lake Mead National Recreation area.  When we got there it was a ghost resort, I bet it was hopping in it's time but now it was dead and eerie. I thought we were done when we only found a boat ramp and nothing that looked like a beach or swimming hole but then we saw a couple of ladies in swimsuits heading to the other side away from the boat ramp so we hopped out and went down to the water.  It looked like it would be great with wavy coast line and a group of islands but we quickly discovered that it was all muddy and eroding.  We meet up with the ladies and discovered they didn't know what they were doing either.  But we found a semi solid piece of land and got into the water and where we had a blast and most importantly got cooled off.

View of our campsite from up on the rocks nearby

Another view of the campsite, they were huge.

108 doesn't really capture it. 112 was the highest I saw.

Forgot my phone when we went down to Lake Mead here's a quick shot from the car that doesn't really capture it.

Becky really likes the heat

The cabins, made in the 1930's for hikers to shelter in

petrified wood.

Samus recovering from the heat