Meeting Up with an Old Friend - Zion National Park

After seeing my sister in Los Angeles, I headed to Springdale, Utah - the valley town of Zion National Park.

Town of Springdale and entrance to Zion. View from our rockclimb.

This was my second trip to Zion and the second time spending it with an old friend, Ryan. Ryan and I are pretty good travel mates - we have been all over the east coast together, road-tripped to Texas, hung out in Hong Kong, and snowboarded in Colorado.

We hiked...

The crew - top of Angel's Landing.

We rock climbed...

            

We foraged up rivers...

Waded through freezing water to get to this fork in The Narrows. Zion National Park.

We drove an hour and a half to Bryce Canyon for the day. The park is filled with limestone towers known as hoodoos - they look like giant drip sand castles. It was raining earlier in the day and the sky was looking pretty stormy as we entered the park. As soon as we got to the trailhead it started to hail. It's a mile hike down through mud and a few of us were hesitant to start the hike... but Ryan led us on despite ice falling on us. 

 After a few minutes into the hike, the hail stopped. By the time we reached the bottom of the canyon, the skies had cleared. We did a 6 mile loop, passed a bunch of horse poop and the occasional horse, and called it a day.

Time flies in this peaceful part of the States. You hear so many stories of people visiting once and deciding to call these parks home. In Zion, any stress seems to melt away, and it's easy to embrace the moment.

Special thanks to the Zion Mountain School for their hospitality and gear :)