Zion National Park

I can’t believe I haven’t blogged about my trip to Zion yet! It was one of the best parts of my summer (and year) so far! My best friend from growing up Blair was moving from Colorado to Portland in June, so she drove through Utah with her sister and I met them down there for the weekend. We camped in a little two-person tent which makes me laugh just thinking about. It was so hot at night, so we took the cover over it, which was actually pretty cool because we could see the stars while going to bed. I had the grand old plan to sleep on a blow up pool floatie thing and it squeaked the whole night whenever I moved, so the second night I slept in my car. Ooooh… my car… I had to rent a car and the rental place ran out of economy cars so they upgraded me for free to a really nice Dodge Charger. It was SO fun to drive!

The first night, we relaxed together and ate outside at a nice little pizza joint, then we woke up pretty early and headed into the park. We hiked up to Angel’s Landing, and honestly it was probably the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Or at least tied with labor with Eva. It really was intense that last half mile, but the rest of the time was so amazing. I felt so proud that I didn’t stop (which I really wanted to a hundred times when it got so steep/crowded/narrow/high). But they kept motivating me and we all made it! The view was unbelievable and so worth the treacherous last half mile! When we hiked back down, we had a quick lunch then went right back up to the park to do the narrows.

By that point we were pretty exhausted from Angel’s Landing but we still went up and back the narrows for a couple of hours. It was just as gorgeous as I had remembered and so refreshing to be in the water after such a hot day! By the time we got back from the shuttle, I think it was about 8 pm and we were so famished and tired so instead of doing a bonfire and making our own dinner as planned, we went with getting lots of Mexican food and it was fabulous. We finished the night with ice-cream, a little night swimming, and then played Heads Up back at the campsite for a while!

On Sunday, we packed up and headed up north, this time with Blair in my car. It was such a blast catching up with her and Anna all weekend and felt like we were back in high school. Such a wonderful weekend, beautiful scenery, a nice break from normal life, and great company!