Escalante

    After a morning hiking in Bryce, we were headed to Escalante National Park. We had reserved our campsite at Escalante State Park Reservoir. Scotty wanted to go swimming but I did not allow it since they informed us they had some gross parasites in the water that gave you “swimmer’s itch”. No thanks! We then decided to hike to the Escalante “Natural Bridge”. We realized that average hikes are now going to seem boring after doing Angel’s Landing and The Narrows. We didn’t realize that the trial led you back and forth over a river where we had to keep taking our shoes off to wade across. That got old quick, so Scotty took one for the team and just gave me a piggy back ride across. Eventually we got to the bridge, which was pretty cool.

            That night I was stoked because we could actually have a campfire.  We bought way more firewood than we needed and had dinner, a bonfire, and s’mores. As we were going to bed we both realized that the fly was on backwards, so we actually could see directly up to the sky, which was kind of neat at the time…. until 2 am when we woke up to rain smacking us in the face. After we turned our sleeping bags around, we fell back asleep and had a soggy cleanup the next morning. It wasn’t the best case scenario, but all the people who we ran into that day were happy to have their first day of rain in 3 months. 

Zion: The Narrows

After renting our canyoneering gear the night before, we were all set for a day of hiking the Narrows. Zion Adventure Company has a great deal where you can rent a hiking stick, hardcore water shoes, and little sock booties for $21. When you put the shoes on, you feel as if you are an astronaut, but they are well worth it after a few hours of hiking in the water. Also, they are good about giving you some pointers and letting you know if it’s a good day to do the hike (and no flashflood warnings are present). We also made sure to use dry bags so that we could get our backpacks wet for the inevitable swims that we would encounter.

The Narrows isn’t like any hike we have done before… It is actually walking, wading and swimming through the Virgin River down an amazing 1,000 feet deep canyon that is only about 24 feet wide at some points. I have done this hike once before in October, but I was looking forward to seeing the differences in temperature, water level, and amount of people. It was even more beautiful than I had remembered. Zion was about 100 degrees that day, but in The Narrows it was much cooler which was nice to have a break from the sun. Along the way we were surrounded by hanging gardens, various colored sandstone rock walls, waterfalls, creepy narrow caves, and gorgeous green and blue water. Scotty’s favorite parts of the hike included: Lunchtime when he finally got to eat his PB & J sandwich and Gushers, exploring Orderville Canyon (a side slot canyon, where we had to climb a old log to get up and over a waterfall), and floating down the river on the way back.