Here is a link to the interactive expedition map.
Our national parks are being loved to death. Too many people. Too many cars. Too much trash....
As a result of "too many cars," the south end of Zion National Park is mostly closed to cars. You can drive into the park, because you need to be able to drive through the south section to get out on the east. (On the 24th we drove through from the east.) But parking is limited. The fact that you can drive in does not mean you can park....
And if you want to go deeper into the southern part of Zion, you must take a shuttle. Or walk.
To encourage people to leave their cars outside the park, there are free shuttle buses that drive through Springdale, picking people up on the way into the park, and taking them out of the park back into town.
This daylily was by the bus stop where we waited for the shuttle into the park on the 26th.
Once you get into the park, you get in line to ride the shuttle that takes you deeper into the park. There are many stops.
Remember, when we were in Bryce, we were always looking down. At the south end of Zion, you are always looking up, unless you climb up to the top.
The shuttle buses have skylights that open. Looking up at the rim through the shuttle-bus skylight.
It's getting to be so long since we were there that my memory is fading, fading, fading. I can't remember if I knew there were people on the edge of this rim when we were there, or if I didn't find out they were there until I got the image above on "the big screen"..........
Looking up.
I pointed the camera too near the sun, so this next image is full of sun flare. But I like the way we can see the *green* against the dark rock....
We have reached the end of the road -- the stop for the Riverside Walk. We are walking to the river, and will walk upstream along the river.
Oh, my, look who else is here!
The wildlife in Zion was less afraid of people than I have ever seen in my life, including the fox squirrels who live on the University of Michigan diag. People are admonished to stay 25 yards away from all wildlife in national parks (and 100 yards from wolves and bears). This can be hard to achieve in Zion, because animals will walk right by you, in the case of deer, and will even jump in your lap, in the case of squirrels. !!! I saw someone sitting to eat a boxed salad. A squirrel jumped right in her lap, took a small carrot from her salad, and jumped down to eat it.
The squirrels came right up to people, looking for food. It was a little scary -- who knows what disease they may carry................
Looking up.
This is the Virgin River, which carved this canyon.....
Video starting with the river, and moving up the rock to the rim.
Ripples in the river.
I believe that is the doe we were looking at earlier, in the middle of the river, close to the middle of this next image.
Much of the rock that makes up Zion is porous. Rain and snow that lands on the tops of things seeps down into the rock, and then seeps out of the walls of the rock. Wet walls, particularly in shadier places, create microclimates that are hospitable to plants that otherwise could not grow in southern Utah.
Look at all of the plants growing on the side of the rock!
Looking downstream.
Looking upstream.
The next image was taken from the same spot as the previous one, but with a horizontal camera instead of a vertical one.
Lots of the rocks along the river are good for stacking.
This is the same stack as the biggest one in the prev., but from a different angle.
Another look upstream.
We saw lots of flowers in Zion.
The water that runs down the walls of the canyon (creating those microclimates for non-desert plants) gathers in little streams that feed the river. Here we are looking down at one little stream that is running from right to left.
Looking downstream.
Looking upstream.
There were two deer in one place. I can't remember if there was another one in the same spot as the doe, or if there was another one here with this buck.
I'm pretty sure this is the deer who came closer and closer to us (aiming for the river, not for us, but we were between him and it).
To my uneducated eye this guy's antlers look good, but the rest of him does not. Bony. Sway-backed. Pot-bellied. I wonder if he has a huge parasite load. Or something. I don't know what deer eat, but there was a lot of vegetation in this part of the park.............
If there were two deer here, as I think maybe there were, perhaps this is the other one. The antlers are very similar, but this one doesn't look as sway-backed or pot-bellied (though we can still see the ribs)....
Here is a link to the next post about the Grand Canyon trip.
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