My original plan was to leave Friday afternoon after work and drive to St. George and stay somewhere down there and then visit with our friends/Ramin's co-workers on Saturday (the boss' kid was having a 5th year birthday party)...but...Ramin likes to play football on Saturday mornings and he opted to leave around noon on Saturday so he could play ball...having us arrive in St. George around 4pm...which is about when we got there, an hour or so into the party time. We did arrive in time for food, cake and presents though.
During the week I'd been talking with my cousin Maria from New York via email and realized that she was going to be in Vegas the SAME weekend we had planned this mini-spontaneous trip! So I arranged with her via email to meet up on Saturday night after we got done with the party.
So we left the party around 6:45pm - a bit later than I'd planned, but we were able to make it to Vegas by 8:30....we met up with Maria and headed for an easy dinner together. It was great catching up with her....but I'm waiting for her to email some of the pictures we took. Once I get those I'll upload them here! The next morning we also had breakfast with her at Denny's (Ramin's favorite place). By 8:30am we were ready to head out and make our way to Zion National Park.
I think we made it to Zion's around 10:30 or so - I can't completely recall. Ultimately, we were both there to visit the park for the first time AND to climb Angel's Landing! Ramin had heard about this hike and has been wanting to do it for a while....he told me some scary stories that it's really scary and hard to do and people have died. My friend Jenn told me she'd done it and was super scared (came to find out AFTER the fact that she didn't actually climb the entire thing....part of my motivation for going all the way was knowing she'd done it too - even though she actually didn't! Hahaha). Ramin told me the hike took 4-5 hours so we knew we had to get going by 11am if we wanted to have enough light left in the park to drive around a bit. Oh BTW, we chose this weekend not only because it was my birthday, but also because the National Parks had free entry because of Veteran's Day...at Zion's, the fee is $25!!! Most of the other parks we've been to are only $12.
Anyway, on to the pics!! Most of the pics are of us hiking Angel's Landing but near the end we have some other shots of the park....here we go!
Here is the lovely sign you get to see at the start of the trail head - nice inspiration people!
This picture was taken at the bottom, near the road...and we are gonna climb THAT huge mountain!?!?! Ummm....I was thinking "are you serious?!?!" when I saw this.
This hike really kicked my butt....but I only stopped for 30 second - 1 minute breaks. I only stopped long enough to slow my heart rate a bit. There are TONS of switch back in order to climb this thing....you can see where we started at the road below and then the trail snaking it's way.
Time for another break....at this point I'd say we were almost to half-way up the mountain...maybe not quite that much.
These switchbacks were the worst...Ramin went up them no problem....you can see me waaaaaay down below...Ramin went up faster than me and took this picture.
Done with the last set of switchback! Now - time for the hard stuff!
We need to climb ALL of this...plus the stuff behind it to the far left! If you make this picture larger, you can see the tiny people scaling the side of this thing!
Same shot, only with me in it! It has a better perspective of the ridge we'll be climbing....all of the stuff directly behind me.
This is looking down from where we were onto "The Organ"
This was some sort of resting spot....this is after a bit of the hard stuff but not quite to the REALLY intense stuff.... Essentially, we had to go down a bit from where Ramin is...and then climb up again along that ridge behind him.
Now we're into the intense stuff. The ridge is basically a bunch of this stuff, pulling yourself up with chains and trying to not fall off the cliff!
We made it to the top!!! You get a 360 degree view of the park and it's amazing canyons and just the overall massive-ness of it! We made it to the top in about 2 hours - even with my breaks!!
You can see the road down below - where we started.
This is a GREAT shot of the ridge itself...cliff on either side of us! Don't make a wrong step!
Here I am holding on to the chain for DEAR LIFE!!
Ramin found a nice little cubby hole to enjoy the view from!
This is a pretty typical shot of what the ridge hike looked like!
Some of THE best pictures of the ridge itself...the very top of that was where we were!
This is the same resting place we were at before, only this time we'd made it to and back...we had a newfound appreciation for that ridge!
Coming down the switchbacks we noticed a cool cave! On the way up I barely paid attention to anything but the ground and going up! Coming down is so much more relaxing - it was all worth it!
Ramin found himself a cave too!
Half-way down the mountain! Gorgeous!
A couple in front of us spotted this male deer eating. By the time we came down from the hike TONS of deer were out eating in the twilight. This guy was literally 20 feet away from us and could really care less.
After the hike we drove through the park. There was an AWESOME tunnel built in the 1930s that had little windows out into the park...here's one of the views from the tunnel.
And finally, our entrance shot! We loved this park so much - if we move to St. George we will definitely be visiting more often!
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