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Friday, September 17

Late afternoon on the 17th of September saw us arrive at the southwestern edge of the Colorado Plateau.
Spectacular terrain near Zion NP
Spectacular terrain near Zion NP
The drive into Zion on Route 9 was ultra-spectacular, as usual (I've been along it many times over the years). That road, late in the day in the sun, has got to be one of the most scenic drives anywhere. Zion's campgrounds where more full than I had expected, and we were almost at the point when we were going to have to consider a motel when we came across a late cancellation at the South Campground in the park. Lucky! We had a very nice pizza and pasta dinner at the trendy 'Zion Pasta and Noodle' restaurant in Springdale.
South Campground scenic campspot
The West Temple
Towers of Zion
The Great Arch
Towers of the Virgin
As I've always said to anyone visiting Zion, one hike you must simply not miss out on is Angel's Landing. Since Jenn and Sophie had both not done it before, it was the first order of business the next morning. It is always fun pointing to the top of the huge monolith of sandstone and saying "we're going there", then watching as the brain tries to figure out... "but how....?".

We all made it to the top, of course, with Jenn and Sophie carefully walking across some of the more exposed sections. This was probably my seventh or eighth time up Angel's Landing, and it seemed so easy compared to the first time I did it. On the way down, we had a quick and breezy rainshower, which obviously caught many of the other hikers on Angel's Landing unprepared (so many people always seem to be unprepared on hikes). Jenn developed a competitive streak on the way down, which resulted in us trail running most of the way down from the summit (All of the many images in the continuous block below are from the Angel's Landing hike - yes, it's that good!)
Angel's Landing
Luke and Sophie on the Angel's Landing trail
Zion Canyon
Blasted out of the rock
Entering refrigerator canyon
Solution Pockets
Peekaboo!
Walter's wiggles
Scout Lookout
My foot at the edge
Angel's Landing knife edge
Traversing along the ridge
Narrow!
A quick break
Looking back down
Scrambling to the top
A careful look
Summit snack
Climbing back down
Cheap Labour
We took it easy for the rest of the day. Jennifer and I went up to the twisty part of Utah 9 to get some 'car in the twisties' type shots. Rather than do any more hiking today, we decided to leave ultra-early the next morning and do some interesting slot canyoning in the Grand-Staircase Escalante National Monument to the east. Well, as it turns out, some sort of weather front must have moved in overnight, because a thunderstorm came rolling through, and then steady rain. And rain. And more rain. And as we drove east through the desert early in the morning, it became apparent we weren't going to be done any hiking in any slot canyons anytime soon. I'd never seen such a rainy gray day in the desert before, and it would have been dangerous to hike in narrow slot canyons in such weather anyway. So we drove right by all kinds of great scenery... Bryce Canyon, the Escalante, and Utah highway 12 in its entirety.
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