Zion National Park, Utah

If you picture United States of America as a place full of skyscrapers, you are wrong. And yes, I was wrong.

If you picture all national parks as greenish forests, you are wrong. And yes, I was wrong again.

Maybe I’m the only one who had a boring picture about national parks. I thought national parks are just like rainforest but with a trail for you to hike. Turns out, Zion doesn’t look as what I was expecting at all. (one habit when I was in Vegas – I didn’t want to search any image about the place I’m about to visit – better keep it as a surprise!)
In fact, it’s much prettier than what I had imagined.

I cropped this from Google Map because I bet you don’t know where Utah is. It’s a state right beside where I lived in – Nevada. And yes, FYI, Las Vegas is in Nevada. Growing up, I’ve heard all about Las Vegas, but I had never heard about Nevada until I knew I was going to stay there for 5 months. And I’m sure that I’m not the only uninformed one because this is usually how people react in –

Situation A
“Where are you hosted at?”
“Nevada”
“Uh? Oh okay.”

Situation B
“Where are you hosted at?”
“Las Vegas”
“OH MY GOSH THAT’S SO COOL!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Anyway back to topic, Zion is beautiful. Shout out to Margaret for bringing us there!

 

See the river back there? It felt freezing cold! Like 10 degree Celcius or less!

Many campers love to camp around Zion National Park. But it happened for a few times where it rained so much and caused flash flood. So if you wanna camp around Zion, please check for any flood alert before planning your trip!

with Hafiz!

 

Anis, me, Finn, Margaret and Hafiz!
Weeping Rock from the outside (can you see the water dripping and the rainbow on the bottom left?)

 

Weeping Rock from the inside!

 

It’s a huge place. We traveled station by station through free shuttle bus!

 

There’s a famous trail called the Narrows which I didn’t get a chance to go. I’ve heard that it’s incredibly beautiful so you might wanna Google it. Here’s what the Narrows look like in the postcard (on the left) I bought at the souvenir shop!

Description about Zion Narrows (taken from the back of the postcard) – 16 miles long (25km), up to 2000 feet (610m) deep and at times only 20 feet to 30 feet (6.1m – 9.1m) wide.

There are hanging gardens in it too!

The postcard on the right shows The Watchman (monolith of Navajo sandstone). It rises 792.5m higher than the Virgin River which helped carve it and continues to run past its base.

If you are a big fan of rock climbing, you’ll have to go to the Angels Landing! Heard that it takes you 5 hours to hike. Definitely great for a morning workout!
(I was trying to find picture of Angels Landing in my album and turns out every mountain looks the same to me I can’t tell which one it is…)

Oh just saying but the road to Zion National Park is brownish-red and feels like a fancy carpet. I forgot what exactly made that happened but it’s something related to the material used to construct the road. Beautiful.

Anyway, it was a really enjoyable relaxing experience. And hopefully I’ll get a chance to walk the Narrows someday in the future!


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