Vacation Day 1: Zion National Park (and the road there)

We started our trip at about 5 in the morning. We packed up the last of our stuff (like the cooler) and hit the road. We made a brief stop at our storage unit in Bountiful and dropped off a few things and then we kept on driving. The first part of our vacation was a stop at the Territorial State House in Filmore Utah.
This building was the Capital of Deseret for about 2 legislative sessions. They met in this room. Now it is used for Community Dances and Youth Conferences.
The building was originally going to have 4 wings and a huge dome. But only one wing was ever completed. There are pavers in the grass that show what the size of the building could have been.
Now the building is a museum and a State Park. It was the first state park we stopped at and so it was where we bought our Annual Pass for all the state parks. $75 gets us into every Utah State park until the end of May next year.

Brandon originally read this sign as Death of a Chef and we had a good laugh over that.
Lindsey this pic is for you. This is called the "Little Rock School House."
After the State House we drove down I-15 and stopped at Cove Fort.
This was built by Gordon B Hinckley's grandfather and now it is a church museum. It has lots of really neat historical furniture and quilts. These trees are over 100 years old.
Here is a picture of how packed our Jeep was all week. We rearranged it a little bit different later, but we never were able to see out the back.
And this is a picture of trail mix. Every year we make trail mix and every year it gets better and better. I couldn't resist taking a pic.
Finally we started to see something that looked like it could be Zion's Canyon. I got super excited and started taking pictures. Turns out those mountains aren't even part of the park.
But then we did get to Zion National Park and it was amazing. I spent the next several hours just looking up.
You can't believe how tall the canyon walls are. They just go up and up and up.
I had never been to Zion's so I was blown away by the greenery.
And the water.
We hiked the River Walk Trail which is a mile long paved trail that runs along the Virgin River (Brandon's joke: It's the Virgin River - even the trout wait) The trail ends at the water in what is called the Narrows, but because of high water we couldn't hike up the Narrows.
Instead we enjoyed a nice walk back up the trail. Did I mention that the park costs $25 as an entrance fee? We paid $80 for an Annual Pass to all Federal Lands. It's good until the end of next May also.
I was overwhelmed by how pretty this canyon was.
Brandon and I were so excited to be on vacation and to get away from our crazy lives for awhile.
We have been planning this trip since the beginning of December. We bought these water backpacks for ourselves for Christmas in anticipation for this trip. ($20 each - what a deal!) I'm so glad we bought them because they are way better than water bottles.
I loved this trail and I'm glad we did it first.
We even saw deer.
Here is another water fall. Don't be fooled this thing is huge!
For some reason the bathrooms were unavailable at the Riverwalk so I got to use an appropriately named "Yucca" port-a-potty.
We got our first look at Angels Landing. It is the high mountain in the front of this picture. The White Mountain behind it is the Great White Throne. The ridge in front of the Great White Throne is part of the Angels Landing hike. Less than 24 hours later we would be hiking on that ridge.
Most of the park is accessible via these really cool shuttle buses. Cars aren't even allowed in most of the Canyon during the summer months. I liked the shuttles because they allowed both me and Brandon to look out the windows and gape. Plus they played an informative guide tape on the way up the canyon so you could know what you were gaping at.
Here is another view of Angel's Landing. It is the huge cliff in the middle of the picture.
We stopped at weeping rock. Apparently the water that runs out of this rock has been seeping through it for hundreds of years. (I don't know how they test that - but whatever)
Another happy pic of us together. Did I mention we were excited to be on vacation.
Brandon getting wept on by the weeping rock.
Brandon looking like Indiana Jones.
This is on the trail to the Lower Emerald Pool.
We called this formation the "Colonoscipy"
A waterfall at the Emeral Pools. We took comfort in the fact that more people have died on this trail than have died on the Angels Landing trail.
The water was more Topaz than Emreld, but it was still pretty.
This is me under the overhang where the waterfall was coming from.
The Three Patriarchs Abriham, Issac, and Jacob (I forgot which one is which)
This is the Watchman. This mountain was right behind our campsite.
Speaking of our campsite here it is.
We stayed at The Watchman Campground for $16. It was very nice and shady. The bathrooms had running water, but no hot water. The bathrooms also didn't have electric outlets which almost caused a disaster. We planned on charging our air mattress pump with our car charger adapter thingy. But it wasn't working. As a plan B we figured we could plug it in in the bathroom, but there were no outlets. So what did we do? Brandon figured out the adapter had blown a fuse so he fixed it with Aluminum Foil from our tin foil dinners. It worked great after that, and we slept on a nice air mattress.
We ate dinner and crawled into our sleeping bags. It had been a wonderful, beautiful, relaxing day. And we still had 8 more days left on our trip.