Utah Day 2

Stuck in the mud

Wildcat Canyon

Scenic Drive in Zion

Checkerboard Mesa hike

Sunday May 25^th, 2008

This was our first day in Zion National Park. We decided to take it easy since we were pretty worn out from driving all day on Saturday so we just did some easy tourist stuff. We started by doing the scenic drive through Zion. There’s a windy road that heads up through the canyon and out of the east entrance that you can drive on. The rest of the park is only accessible through the Zion shuttle system. The drive was a nice way to get a quick glimpse of this beautiful place. Once we got up to the end we went on a short hike called “Checkerboard Mesa”. The trail goes on for miles but we just did about 2 or 3 miles of it.

After Checkerboard we decided to head up towards the Kolob Canyon portion of the park and do a hike up there that was recommended in one of the guide books. Wildcat Canyon was a little disappointing to me compared to some of the other hikes we did but it was still pretty nice up there once we got to the part of the trail with a view (You could see the main part of Zion Canyon off in the distance).

Being the adventurer’s we are we decided to take an “unimproved” (dirt) road back to Cedar City. I would recommend doing a little more research on such roads before taking them on. We ended up getting stuck in about 2 feet of mud and snow somewhere near the top. We were saved by some guy who lived up there and saw us driving by before we got stuck. I think he hopped on his ATV immediately cause he knew we wouldn’t make it. He got there about 2 or 3 minutes after we got stuck and pulled us out with his little 4 wheeler. We had to drive through the field to get around the snow and mud but after this part we didn’t encounter any more surprises.