To Infinity and Beyond

After finishing our Narrows expedition, we decided on one more hike for Zion.  The decision was actually quite simple – since I am pretty afraid of heights, Angels Landing was out of the question, but Observation Point sounded doable.  But in all honestly, I felt a little bit like a horse who needed blinders on during the entirety of the hike.  (Luckily for me I was able clutch myself against the mountain both going up and coming down.)

When you start the hike, you think, “hey, this can’t be too bad.”  Think again!  This hike was definitely not for the faint of heart – you follow switchbacks up the mountain for hours.  I have been thinking that since the rangers give warnings about fear of heights, shouldn’t they give similar warnings for fear of switchbacks?!?

At one point, I kept saying “we’re almost there…we’re almost there,” because I literally thought that we were almost there.  I saw someone coming down from the top, and so I asked her how much further we were.  She said “just one more big incline and then it levels out for the rest.”

Unfortunately, her description was a bit off.  We spent another 40 minutes (at least) climbing uphill before it ever leveled out.  Guess the joke was on us.  But all complaining aside, when you make it to the top, the views are spectacular.  You get to see the entire park – it was truly breathtaking and worth the climb.

I even happened to catch sight of the switchbacks that we took as we came up.  Luckily we packed a nice picnic lunch to have at the top before heading down.

After making it back down and cooling off in the creek along the parking lot, we jumped in the car (grateful to be seated for a bit), and began our drive out of Zion and towards Bryce Canyon National Park.

The drive to Bryce was beautiful.  There were lots and lots of rocks, all beautiful, but a lot.

And when there weren’t beautiful rocks, there were stores selling rocks.

And if rocks don’t do it for you, well, there’s always espresso, right?

As we neared Bryce, we started to notice more and more snow.  Snow?  Snow was definitely not part of the plan.  We live in Southern California, so we don’t exactly know what to do with snow nowadays.

But since avoiding snow was not an option, and everything in Bryce was closed by the time we arrived (because of the snow), we decided to make the most of the night.  Afraid of the nearing darkness and dropping temperatures, we quickly set up camp, cooked up dinner and fell asleep before we had a chance to notice that we were camping in the snow in 20° temperatures.