After a long Football season, we were finally able to get out and spend some time outdoors. We left on Friday and headed down to Zion National Park. This was our first long-distance trip with Bailey, which was a little nerve-racking, but she actually did quite well. We only had to make two stops for her on the way down, one of which we would have stopped anyway (in Cedar City for food and gas).
Day 1
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We arrived at Zion around 3pm, which only gave us enough time to do one hike before it got too dark and too cold. We decided to do the 2 mile (rt) hike up from the Temple of Sinawava to the Virgin River narrows entrance. It was a nice little hike and afforded me some time to experiment with the slow shutter speed waterfall pictures on my new camera. I still don't know what I'm doing, but it was fun to pretend like I was a photographer.
Here are some of the pictures:
Us at the virgin river narrows entrance
Bailey is all ready to hike
We almost lost Caiden
The Narrows entrance
Slow shutter speed pictures of the Virgin River
Day 2
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Got up at 7am (well, Bailey told us to get up) and hung around the hotel for a bit. We arrived up at the Weaping Rock trailhead around 9am and got ready for the steep hike up the East Rim trail to check out the lower portion of Echo Canyon.
Echo Canyon itself is mostly a technical slot canyon, but you can see some nice things once you get up there. It was pretty cold and we had Bailey wrapped up quite well, but she was still pretty irritated by the time we got up there.
Here are some pictures from the hike up (and down). Click on the picture, then "all sizes" to see a larger, more detailed picture:
Caiden at the trailhead
Our family at the trailhead
The trail takes us up dead-center and to the left of this picture
The trail up is paved like this for the first 45 minutes, which was nice
Being that we were on the East side of the canyon, the sun still had not hit us yet, so it was cold
Looking down on our switch backs. Hidden Canyon trail leads off to the upper right
above and looking down lower Echo canyon just before it turns to dump over Weaping rock. There are some awesome slots in this canyon, but it's forbidden to go through by the park because you would have to rappel down over weaping rock to end your hike
Here is a view looking down on the lower echo slot. I imagine there are some pretty cool pictures in there
Looking down lower echo canyon. This is where you would enter if you were to attempt to go down lower Echo canyon
Small side slot (with pool) in the lower canyon (trail actually bypasses up on the right)
Looking up Echo canyon. The East Rim trail continues up on the left, while the Echo Slot is in the center of the picture (you can barely see it)
Alene standing with Bailey at the entrance (or exit, depending on which way you're coming from) of Echo Canyon
Standing at the exit (or entrance) to Echo Canyon. We couldn't go up the slot because there was a huge pool about 30' in
The pool
Caiden and I in the slot
Representin' near the pool
Above, looking up Echo Canyon. This must be such an amazing slot to go through.
Looking down Echo Canyon where the slot exits
Looking down on Zion and the virgin river
Looking across from the trailhead
There were still a lot of fall colors up here
The trip was a lot of fun. The next time we come back we want to attempt the Hidden Canyon trail. Bailey was actually really good on the hike, the only thing that was tough was how cold it was. We could have kept hiking up the East rim trail (which is another hike I want to do, possibly next time), but it was just too cold for her.
Root Family
Nov 21, 2008
Nov 7, 2008
Went to take pictures at the Great Salt Lake today
It's been a while since I've written anything here, and even though I didn't really do anything hard-core outdoorsy, I still wanted to post about an hour trip I took with Bill and Clint out to the Great Salt Lake to take some pictures with my new camera. With how busy I've been with football and finishing the basement, it was really nice to be able to get out and just do something relaxing.
Here are some pictures I took (you can click on them to take you to the picture page where you can select a larger size from there):
It was a ton of fun. I'll never consider myself a "photographer", but I like to take pictures and see if I can get lucky enough to capture something cool.
Here are some pictures I took (you can click on them to take you to the picture page where you can select a larger size from there):
It was a ton of fun. I'll never consider myself a "photographer", but I like to take pictures and see if I can get lucky enough to capture something cool.
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