Camping at Zi-ON

Top 10 things we learned about camping at Zion:

1. Unless you want to spend the night in your car, it's crucial to RESERVE YOUR CAMPING SITE! We learned this the hard way. We thought we would easily get a site because we planned our trip the day AFTER Memorial Day...the day people were supposed to be leaving the park and heading home. We were wrong. Luckily they had 1 group camp site they were opening up to groups of 2 or less. There were 4 groups of us who ended up sharing a site and a fire. We shared some interesting fire conversation :). We're just grateful to have had a place to camp! We only had the site for 1 night, so we had to pack up our stuff early the next day and find a new area. Our tent went up a lot quicker the 2nd time!

2. Apparently unless you're from Utah, the common pronunciation of Zion National Park is "Zi-ON". I found it interesting that even though on the shuttle rides they must say the name about 100 times, tourists still don't get it :).

3. Don't feed the animals! There's a fine of $100 for feeding them. The animals at the park are extremely domesticated, and it's hard to NOT feed them. We had deer walking right through our campsite without a care in the world, and Dale had an encounter with a very brave and reckless squirrel who climbed up on our water packs and stuck his head in our bag of cookies, trying to climb in. Dale had to swat it (gently :) to save the cookies. According do Dale, these weren't just any cookies, they were "scrumptious chocolate caramel cookies". Of course we had to save them :).

4. Cooking over the camp fire has its perks! We made tin foil dinners both nights we were there, and wow, there's NO CLEAN UP! You just throw the foil away when you're done...now that's my kind of cooking! The first night we made the traditional meat, onion, carrot and potato dinner, which turned out delicious. I'm not sure if it was because they were actually really tasty or because we were starving. Probably a little bit of both. On Tuesday night we ventured out and attempted tin foil calzones. We bought pizza crust and put suace, cheese, canadian bacon and pineapple in the middle and folded them over and sealed the edges and wrapped foil around them. I was a little unsure of how they would turn out, but wow, amazing! And once again, NO MESS!

5. The red rocks are absolutely stunning! We loved seeing all of the different colors on our amazing hikes!

6. There's a lot of religious background that accompany the names of the mountains. We saw "The Patriarch's Court. The mountains are named "Abraham, Isaac & Jacob" from the Old Testament. We also saw "The Podium" and "The Alter," and "The Organ," so named because it looks like organ pipes. Zion is beautiful!

7. It's important to follow the map carefully if you don't know your way around! We ended up driving up the same winding mountain 3 times looking for the place we wanted to hike. Turns out we should've taken the fork in the road, but didn't realize it until we took a look at our trusty map. We did however end up seeing a mountain that had what looked like a man flexing carved into the side :).

8. Keeping your firewood in a safe dry area is crucial if there's a storm coming :). Tuesday was our full day of camping. After resetting up camp we spent the afternoon hiking to "The Emerald Pools". It was about a 2 1/2 mile round trip paved hike- this is definitely my kind of hiking! It was beautiful weather...if anything, maybe a little on the warm side. When we finished we got some ice cream and relaxed at a park...and then the clouds started moving in. We thought we might be able to make 1 more run up the canyon for another quick hike before dinner when the rain came. It didn't just sprinkle, it POURED. Luckily we were already on the shuttle bus when it started, though the rain still came in through all the open windows that are impossible to shut! I was worried about what we were going to do about dinner. We had left our firewood out by our pit for easy access later that night, and I was just sure they were going to be soaked, which would mean no dinner for us! Everything we brought had to be cooked over the fire. Much to our surprise, it was raining EVERYWHERE except above our camp grounds. We were definitely blessed :).

9. If you leave the park and plan on getting back in, don't forget to bring your ticket with you! We had gotten a late start on the day, so we had to park in Springdale, the small tourist town outside of the park, and were going to take the shuttle back in. Well, we drove out there, found a parking spot, waited for the bus, drove back in, all to find out we had forgotten to bring our Park Pass with us. Lucky us, we got to take the shuttle back, find our parked car, wait the shuttle again, ride it back to Zion, and then FINALLY we got to visit the park. It was definitely worth the wait!

10. It's a lot easier and more fun packing to go camping than coming home and putting everything away...Need I say more?