We’re settling into a routine. We work Sat – Tue, then we get 3 days off. That makes Friday the end of our weekend. We usually spend one day chore-ing, which includes a grocery run to Kanab (about 25 miles), along with a stop at the library and other miscellaneous stuff. The other 2 weekend days are spent visiting sights in the area.
This week I went back to Zion without Danita and hiked Angle’s Landing. This is the most popular trail in the park. It’s 5 miles long with 1500 feet of vertical gain. There’s no way Danita would attempt this with her knee, plus her aversion to heights. The trail is listed as strenuous, is famously narrow, and has a chain to help hikers. I found it to be a fun hike of mostly walking up an incline path, followed by simple rock scrambling. There was one spot I really wanted the chain. For the rest of the hike, the chain wasn’t needed and sometimes was just in the way.
You know you’re at the end of the trail when you see everybody ahead of you either sitting down or taking pictures. There were obviously amazing views of deep canyons and big rocks, but they tend not to photograph very well. There were a couple of chipmunks who were afraid of nothing. I had to warn one woman about the chipmunk going inside her pack. Following my new hobby of eating lunch in amazingly beautiful places, I found the chipmunks especially interested in my cashews.
With only one more day for visiting, Danita and I decided to visit Navajo Lake. We found very little information about the area. Since it’s at 9,000 feet, the visitor’s center and all but a few camp sites were closed for the season. We decided to hike a trail called Cascading Falls – one mile round trip with mild elevation changes. It turned out to be the surprise of our trip so far. The trail was near the ridge of the cliff with spectacular views all the way to Zion park. It took us quite a while to hike this trail because I kept on stopping to take pictures.
When we got back to the car, we took another trail to Aspen Mirror Lake. This turned out to be a delightful pond with a very nice mountain stream. The overall hike was less than a mile, but the area was quite lovely. We even found a substantial beaver dam downstream a little. We continued our new hobby (eating lunch in amazingly beautiful places) by eating lunch on one of these lava rocks.
I hope this finds everybody doing well.