Safe in Denver + Pictures from Day 2: Zion National Park

After a half-day at Arches National Park and a drive through the beautiful Rocky Mountains, we're safe in Denver, CO for the night! Here are some pictures of our time in Zion yesterday.

Even the drive into Zion was pretty epic. We got kind of a late start--it was about 11:00AM when we were driving into the park.

When we got there, the park's parking was full! So we had to park in the nearby town and hike in (there's also a shuttle).  We didn't have a whole lot of time to spend since we had six hours of driving ahead, so we had to narrow it down to only a couple things. Of course, this still produced a billion pictures!

I can't remember the names of all the different peaks, but many of them had Biblical names. The giant white mountain you'll see in some pictures among the red mountains is called The Great White Throne.

Zion National Park is in a canyon. There's a bus that runs within the canyon where private vehicles can't go. So even though we didn't have time to hike and climb it all, we did get to ride the bus along the whole loop and get a quick glimpse of all the sights!

 Here you can see the trees that run along the Virgin River, which carved the Zion Canyon.

Our favorite hike of the day was up to Weeping Rock, which is continually dripping with water filtering through the rock. Plants spring up anywhere there is water, so you can see the flowers hanging from the ledge and in every crevice that water falls.

It was surreal how beautiful the red rocks were against the perfectly blue sky.

On our way out we took our traditional picture at the park sign!

The road from Zion to Moab, UT was pretty, too. We passed through everything from mountains to farmland. Most of the drive was super-rural. Sometimes there were 130 miles between gas stations.

Unfortunately, it was mostly dark by the time we got to the canyonlands and the salt flats. The glimpses we got, though, were completely otherworldly. I wish we could have driven through it in the daytime, but at the same time, I'm really glad that we got to spend the time we did at Zion!

Tomorrow I'll post pictures of Arches NP!