A Place of Refuge

...and that's exactly what it is. Zion National Park has been one of our favorite stops so far - even if the first day was not-so-good. It is just a tiny speck compared to other national parks, but it has so much to offer. We got to the park yesterday morning (Saturday June 8th). We were planning on taking it easy that day and just get a feel for the park. We started by taking the tram to the lodge, which is in the middle of the park, and headed on a short trail to The Emerald Pools. They were beautiful!

They aren't really pools - this was the first one out of three.

During this short hike I started to not feel the greatest, so we only hiked to the second pool and then headed back down. By the time we got back to the lodge I felt terrible, and had one of those "I just want to go home and hug my puppy" moments. Being the great husband that Ty is he drove us back into the nearby town and found us a cheap room. (He managed to find us a little room one block away from the rest of the hotel. It is tiny, but cheap and we like cheap.) However, as I was curled up in a ball in our room we realized that we were robbed! Yup, for the first time on this trip we were stolen from. While we were on our short hike someone syphoned a whole tank of gas from us. 1) We parked in the main parking lot, 2) The parking lot is full of people, 3) we had just filled up! Don't worry they left us about 20 miles of gas worth. 

Once we got over that, we realized that the AC in our room was broken. Utah is nice and cool in the morning, but mid-day and it is brutal. It still isn't fixed, but we are thankful to have a bed and shower.

While I laid in our room all day yesterday, Ty went back into the park (he took the town shuttle, sorry mean robbers) to do some more hiking. 

He took a lot of video, so I don't have many pictures to show you.

And cue the end of day 1. Don't worry it gets a lot better...

This morning, after eating a hardy breakfast of poptarts, I was feeling much better! (I swear after this trip poptarts and rolled up PB&J will never touch my lips again.) I was praying all day yesterday that I would be better today because I was really looking forward to today's hike. 

This morning was beautiful! We took the shuttle into Zion and then another shuttle took us as far as shuttles take you into the park. We then hiked 1ish miles to the Virgin River and began our hike through the river. Here are some pictures from today...

Lunch break

We rock jumped(?) off of this

All of the walls had this type of texture

Before going to a national park we like to google and see how many people have been injured or have died in that park over the past year (I know morbid). For the first 10 minutes of this hike I kept asking myself "I wonder how many people have lost their ankles in this water?" It was sooo cold, but after a while you become numb and it really feels quite nice. There is a video that Ty took of me rock jumping and it is shaking so much from him shivering.

Tomorrow we will be heading to one other park in Utah, Arches National Park, for just a few hours and then we will be on our way to Colorado. It is hard to believe that our trip is already winding down - we will be home Saturday (a day earlier than planned), tis bittersweet.

Until the next time we can update... love ty and kaddie