Kicked out of Zion

Friday night, my first night in the Zion National Park area I learned from my last trip here back in April and I camped in a small sandy spot about 5 miles from the entrrance. The National Park is right next to a town that gets very busy with tourists so I was just the right distance away.

Suprising for this time of year, but not so considering the gorgeous weather and a 3 day weekend for Utah schools, the Park was VERY busy. So much so I had to park in the overflow lot. You can't drive to any of the hiking trails in Zion. You have to park and catch a shuttle bus. A great idea to minimise the traffic and pollution. Catching the bus to "The Grotto" to hike Angel's Landing trail was fun, like one of those Japanese trains where they have to push people in. It was standing room only. I chatted to a nice young couple - McKenzie and Harrison - who were taking the weekend away from Brigham Young University (BYU, not likely to be confused with BYO in that particular location) in Provo to come hiking with some of their friends. We had some great discussions after the hike too.

Hiking those trails on a busy weekend involves quite a lot of waiting at the bottle neck places. Angel's Landing is steep but fairly simple until the last 1/2 mile which goes straight up a vertical ridge, only about 6' wide at times and a 1500' drop off both sides. It's quite the scramble (there are of course chains for the non-climbing types) especially when there's a line of 30 people coming down and just as many queued up to go up. An older guy (Bob from Salt Lake) in front of me was clearly not so comfortable with the heights so I offered to stay with him and talk him up and down. His young granddaughter of about 7 or 8 was having far less trouble and I enjoyed all their company for the duration.

After the hike I decided to cook dinner at a picnic table just beside the parking lot because it's tough doing it on the ground with my grill and no tables at the campsite I'd had the previous night. By the time I was done it was dark. Normally I'd go back to my previous place but I was planning on coming back to the Park the next morning. Unfortunately the campground was already full. The overflow lot for the campground had a few cars in it so I figured I'd just crawl into the back of my truck and nobody would know I was in there - WRONG ! Around 11:30pm I saw bright headlights and figured it was the Ranger checking the cars. I stayed quite still but I guess the officious little Nazi saw me in the back. He banged on the side and made me get up. He would listen to no amount of reasoning and wrote me a warning ticket and told me to leave the park until the morning. Being that late, I drove just outside the gates and parked on the side of the road with no more disturbances the rest of the night.

Saturday morning I went and parked in the same spot to have breakfast with a plan to hike the narrows, a cool slot canyon where you walk through waist deep water. However, the wind and general chilly weather dissuaded me and I headed off toward Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.