Zion!

We spent the last two days camping in Zion National Park at the Watchman Campground. Zion is amazing, but unfortunately we didn't have great weather. Here is Joey in a tree right after we got to the campground.

It was a beautiful sunset at dinner, this is the view from camp. The setting sun made the rocks bright red.

Getting ready in the morning.

We walked through the visitor's center area to get to the buses. In Zion, there is one road that goes up through the canyon. In 2000, the park began using shuttle buses to bring all the people up because the road was getting really crowded. The system works very well, there are nine stops on the route and you can get on and off at any stop. Buses come to each stop every five or ten minutes.

The view from our first stop. We were measuring the incision rate of the Virgin River, so we took water samples at three different springs and measured the calcium concentrations.

It didn't rain on our first day, but the sky was white and overcast for most of the day. It was still very spectacular though!

We saw some turkeys.

Davey and John fighting.

Davey and John being buddies.

We some deer too, they would go really close to the trail and the road!

This is one of the springs we tested water from.

One of our favorite things about Zion was the amount of vegetation and the range of different ecosystems. The canyon floor is at about 3600 feet and there is a river going through so there are a lot of cotton wood trees and pretty grasses. The tops of the peaks are almost at 8000 feet, there is a huge topographic variation! As you climb higher the vegetation changes and there are a lot of cactuses and it is more like a desert.

Looking down the canyon.

The Temple of Sinawava, one of the springs we tested from.

Reed at the Temple.

At the end of the day we got to walk into a place called the narrows. It is after the road ends and it is just the river flowing through the canyon. It is amazing, the width of the canyon is about fifty feet, but the peaks rise up to a thousand feet above you. The water was up to our thighs at the deepest sections so it wasn't bad to walk through. Here is Claire getting really excited for the narrows.

Entering the narrows!

Schatz in the narrows.

Pretty shot of the narrows.

Schatz, Sam, Eric, and John walking through the narrows.

Some nice vegetation.

After the narrows we walked back to the buses along the Temple of Sinawava Trail, there are some great views!

The path on the left goes along the river the entire time.

Today was our off day, a bunch of us set out to do a scary hike called Angel's Landing. Here are some of us leaving camp. We hopped on the bus and went up to the fourth or fifth stop for the trailhead. During the night there was a huge thunderstorm. It was really cool and luckily we all stayed dry in our tents!

Izzy, Gerben, and Reed testing out some raincoats.

The beginning of the trail switchbacked up and then we went inside a canyon.

There's a storm-a-comin!

It started pouring rain and hailing, some waterfalls formed on the cliffs. We waited out the worst of the storm under an overhanging ledge.

Then, some of us went back down because we didn't want to do the scary part of the hike in a storm, others kept going. The group that was going down had to walk through several waterfalls that formed over the trail.

Shelby, Ying Qi, and Jen at the base of Angel's Landing.

We left Zion at 2:30 and drove an hour or so to Cedar City. We are spending the night here and then moving on to Bishop California tomorrow! Today is the last day of our Parks segment so we have a lot of work due tonight. It was a great segment and we are sad to see Carl leave.

Dave and Iz