Day 24: Sunday 18-Jul-1999

Base camp: Kanab, Utah

Excursion: Zion National Park, Utah

Distance: 94 mi (150 km)

Today would be our Zion day. We woke up at 5:30 in the morning and started to get ready. We moved the kids, half asleep, out into the truck. Lillemor packed some picnic food. By about 6:50 we were on our way to Zion. It did not take long to get there. By the time we reached the gates, there were no park rangers there. Did not matter to us, because we had already paid a few days earlier. We quickly drove through the tunnel and started our drive up the canyon. We stopped at a lookout and walked up a few hundred yards to take a few pictures. The mountains look very nice during sunrise. The kids stayed in the truck while we walked up. By this time, there were very few vehicles in the park.

	Spectacular mountains as we enter the canyon in Zion.

We then moved to our first hike: the Weeping rock. The kids came out with us. Erik did not want to put on his hiking boots and instead insisted on wearing his sandals. This was a short and nice hike, perhaps about 1/2 mile. At the end of the trail we arrived at the base of a steep cliff. Water was dripping from the cliff down on the ground, as if it was weeping. By the time we returned back to the truck, more cars had already started to arrive.

We then decided to drive to the end of the road in the canyon. As we passed the lodge, we a family of Pheasants appeared along the road with perhaps 4 or 5 chicklets. We stopped at the end and took the riverbed hike that stars there. We walked a little bit up the trail and then walked down on the rocks by the riverbed, where we set things up to eat our breakfast. On our way out there we saw a deer, eating the fresh vegetation. It must have been completely captive in there, as there was nowhere to go except out of the canyon. It was cool. Per had T-shirt and shorts on and was cold. The kids played around along the riverbed. The river was perhaps 20 feet wide and green:ish in color. The kids found a few tadpoles in some stale water near the riverbed. Isabella wanted to take some pictures but realized they were so small that they could hardly be seen on the picture. After we returned some of our picnic stuff to the truck we started walking the trail for real. Karl decided to be cranky and did not want to walk. He was wining and wanted Lillemor to carry him. After a while he found a big, Y-shaped, stick he pretended was a motorcycle. That made him a bit more quiet. The trail was paved and not very difficult. We came to the end of the paved part. Groups of people now started arriving, many wearing beach shoes or sandals. They walked down into the shallow river and continued in the water up the canyon. This is something we should do the next time we visit Zion. The return trip to Zion took a little bit longer as Karl was still a bit moody. But he made it back on his own. The total trail was, perhaps, a bit over a mile.

	Eating breakfast along the canyon in Zion

	Here is where the trail ended for us. Only Erik had sandals. The rest of us had hiking boots so we could not continue any further, even thought it looked very inviting.

By the time we got back to the truck, the parking was overflowing with cars, trucks, motorcycles and RVs. What a difference an hour makes. The weather was quite nice and the temperature had started to heat up to the point where the extra jackets were quite uncomfortable. We decided that we wanted to do at least one real hike. Following the conversation Per had with a hiker the other time we went up into Zion, we decided to visit the Emerald Pools, which starts on the other side of the road from the lodge (about midway into the canyon). There are three pool levels: lower, middle and upper emerald pools. We started our treck towards the upper pools. Karl was cranky and fell a number of times. By the time he got back into a good mood he rushed up the trail and fell flat on his stomach on a big, sandy, rock. We were now back to zero with his mood. This trail is not paved and modestly steep and narrow. It follows the side of the mountain with a drop-off to one side. The temperature had now started to climb and we could feel it as we climbed. Isabella and Erik had gone ahead (without our approval). Karl was getting increasingly cranky and complained about hiking "being stupid". Before we knew it we arrived at a number of very nice pools. They were shallow and clear. We saw a few tadpoles. The kids immediately jumped into the water to cool off [we would later learn from a tiny sign at the end of the trail that wading in these pools was prohibited .. curiously enough this was not posted in the trail, by the pools or in their brochures, but there were plenty of signs about "revegetation areas -- please do not walk here]. After about a 1/2 hour of we decided we should continue along the trail.

	Taking a break by the middle Emerald Pools. Very refreshing.

After a short while we learned that we had visited the middle pools. The upper pools laid a bit further up the trail. A sign said 0.3 miles to upper pools. This turned out to be a tough 0.3 miles with Karl. There was no shade, steep and plenty of big rocks in the trail which required constant hand-holding. What kept him going was the idea that there would be another "pool" further up. And, indeed, there was one. There were less people up here. It was quite nice. The pool was at the base of a huge cliff. We felt like standing next to a very large building in New York City. It was flat and went on forever up into the sky, probably several hundred feet. We rested here for a while and ate a small snack. We then started to climb down.

	The upper pool was very nice. Not as many tourists bothered to take the last hike in the sveltering heat. Notice how we were dressed in thick clothes as we started out this morning, but later had to peel off a few layers as the sun got into the canyon.

	The kids found tree frogs by the upper pool (which were all returned where they were found).

By the time we re-joined the lower trail we decided to go left instead of returning back to the truck the same path we had come up. This would eventually lead us to the lower pools. It was also nice, bit not as nice as the upper one. Or, perhaps, we should say it was different from the upper pools. A lot more accessible, for sure.

	A small waterfall by the lower Emerald pools. This water appears to be the run-off from the middle pools.

Here the path was paved. We probably made a good choice of ending our hike on the easy trails instead of the tough ones. By the time we got back to the truck, we had been walking the Emerald Pools trail for about 3 hours. Per was pooped by the time we got back to the truck and did not want to eat anything there. We decided to drive back to the trailer.

When we got back to the trailer we all took a nap. Per slept for two hours. We then went out to our local pool for a swim. Very nice. As we went out a bit earlier, the sun still covered parts of the pool (which typically would be in shade by the time we get back from our day trips). We took it easy in the evening and ate at the trailer. We felt we deserved some real junky hamburgers. Yum. Roundtrip today was about 80 miles. Another excellent day.

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