Zion

I love vacations. There just aren't words for how nice it is to not be doing anything, nobody cares where I am or what I'm doing, I'm COMPLETELY free. I love that feeling.

Friday morning after sleeping in and taking our time, we arrived in St. George. We got to the hotel, swam, watched movies, played games, ordered pizza, it was great. We decided last night that we'd go to Zion National Park this morning and maybe do a quick hike and come home. Turns out that it's like a 45 minute drive, so by the time we got there, we wanted to make it worth it. We hiked to Emerald Pools (all 3 of them) and weeping rock. The funniest thing was that on our way to Emerald Pool, we went backwards, starting with the highest, then working out way down from there. We got to the part of the trail that forks off to go up to the highest pool, and I wasn't sure I'd make it, but Josh was patient and nice and I did. We went to the highest one and as we came down into the pool area, this is what we saw:




Yes, that's right. A HUGE gathering of people. A bunch of them with cameras, and they all seemed to be paying attention to something. We kept walking in, (this is a national park and not somebody's private backyard, right? can people reserve this? are we intruding on an important meeting?) and learned that the thing everyone was looking at was a wedding. Yep, people were getting married. Who knew? Weird. So we kinda hid out of the way, clapped at the end of the ceremony with everyone else, took some pictures of a frog and went back down. :) The lower 2 pools were very disappointing because there is so little water they were more like over sized puddles than pools. I was really glad we went the extra half mile to the highest pool, even if there was a big fat wedding party there too.

Next we did weeping rock. Again, the lack of water was a little disappointing, but it was still really beautiful. I can only imagine what it's like when it's really running.

As we came down from weeping rock we realized that we could see! When we got there in the morning there was so much smoke, you couldn't see far. The nice-park-ranger-lady told us that it settles into the canyon at night and then moves up when it heats up. So, it got HOT and sunny, and all of those good things. We hung out, walked, sweated, looked at the beautiful canyon and then came back. It was a great time, I remembered what a wuss I am, and I'm glad we did it. I can't tell you how thankful I was for my amazing husband for his patience and support. He rocks.

On our way down we found a trading post, we went in there and got our anniversary presents. See, Josh came up with this really great idea, that instead of worrying about anniversary presents, we'd just go somewhere cool every year. Only then he was feeling a little sad/left out for not getting presents, so we decided that we'd get something from wherever we went on our vacation. So, we stopped at the trading post and I got a BEAUTIFUL wind chime, and Josh got some really yummy smelling rocks. It was cool. So, that was our really fun day today. I'm pretty sure my legs will be sore tomorrow, but it was well worth it to see everything we saw. I was nervous about coming down here where it's hot, but I'm glad we're here.