Decided to take it a bit easier today, after doing The Narrows yesterday.
Started out with an easy walk on the Pa’rus Trail, which is a paved sidewalk that runs for about a mile along the river from the Visitor’s Center. Got a nice photo of The Watchman.
Then we caught the Shuttle up to the Zion Lodge where we started the Emerald Pools trail. This trail runs by some small pools that are filled with algae that turns the water green. Evan was incensed that people were wading in the pools despite there being signs around telling them not to. Told him it wasn’t his problem.
After that, we stopped by the lawn in front of the Lodge to eat lunch and have an ice cream.
Being a Saturday, it was pretty crowded in the park. We decided to walk along the Sandbench Trail, which runs along the west side of the river (away from the road). It’s actually the horse trail.
Along the trail, we saw a rattlesnake. I only got a few snaps before it slithered away.
When we came across the riders on the path, we mentioned the snake to the leader. He said that they referred to them as “rattle worms”. I don’t know if they really do or if that’s part of the “cowboy persona”.
We went on a ranger program called “Rock and Stroll”, which involved some talk about geology as the group walked along the river. Beth likes looking for rocks, so she enjoyed it a lot. She plans to come back to the site tomorrow to spend more time looking around.
I was hoping to get some sunset photos of the cliffs, but it was too cloudy. There were few minutes of sunlight on Cable Mountain. This was a mountain that an entrepreneur used to lower lumber down into the canyon using a sophisticated cable system. The remains of the cable system can still be seen at the top.
Got a few shots on the way back to the campsite, but nothing really lit up the way I wanted it to. Maybe I’ll have better luck tomorrow.
That evening, we went to a campfire program about astronomy.
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