Rusty ochre, yellows and white stripped cliffs with plenty of trees, a lot greener than the deserts we had come from and squirrels everywhere, darting about on the ground not up in the trees where I expected them to be.
We parked at the visitor centre and jumped on the shuttle bus, which drives up and down the road stopping at lookouts and trailheads depositing tonnes of tourists at each spot.
We started with a short walk called The Riverwalk. The bus emptied with us, people all kitted up with hiking boots, entire families in matching shoes with the rental numbers drawn on the heel and all stomping along the wide paved path with their walking sticks. I was like wtf, the rental store has definitely done a number on these guys.
After only a ten minute walk the path stopped at the river, Robina and I were taking photos when
we realised no one else had stopped, the entire herd of tourists, literally a hundred people walked into the water and knee-deep began trekking up river.
So maybe the rented shoes and sticks were justified and of course we followed them.
This was The Narrows, we criss-crossed the river, wading down between the cliffs as they became a narrow canyon, shady and cool with small waterfalls cascading down the sides, a totally unexpected and fun little hike.
The largest hike for the day was the trail up to Emerald pools, a long, hot, steep walk, with little shade on the sandy paths, but we got to the upper pools where it was shaded and the chilly waters beneath the waterfall are a welcome relief from the heat.
After Zion we had a long drive day from to get to Yosemite (yo-sem-it-tee not yos-mite as I always thought at a kid).
The ten hour drive day, started with driving out of the hills of Zion and opening up into flat straights, in the distance were snow-capped mountains that we didn't realise our little rental car would be struggling over in about eight hours time.
A few hours in we turned on to 'The Extraterrestrial Highway', I was pretty excited but we didn't seen any aliens, just a couple of hours of long straight road, mirages from the heat and flat, yellow grasslands with a few cows and cow crossing road signs that had been 'updated' to show aliens spaceships anal-probing the cows.
'omg it's so deserted even the tumbleweeds don't come here!' said Robina.
We were half way through when we realised we were running low on petrol. Next town we said, but the next town was nothing but a single hotel with a spaceship hanging from a tow-truck out front. The town after that was also just a couple of dilapidated old buildings.
There were few cars to be seen, we saw one guy stopped off on the side of the road, going through the toolbox on the back of his truck as we passed.
'Well at least he's behind us so can stop and help if we run out of fuel,' said Robina.
'I dunno,' I said, 'he looks a bit Wolf Creek to me.'
'It's OK, Warm Springs is coming up,' said Robina, 'Google maps says it's a town.'
But Warm Springs was deserted too, three dilapidated, boarded up buildings the only proof it had even been anything.
'OK the next one is definitely a town,' said Robina. 'There's like other roads off it and stuff, it must be a town. We're only 40 miles away.'
'Hmm that's a long way to walk,' I said looking at the fuel gauge on empty.
So Robina the optimist counted down the miles convinced we would get there while me being a little more pragmatic converted the miles to kilometres and tried to figure how long it would take to walk in this heat and remember how many water bottles we had in the boot.
But finally we rounded a corner and there it was, a real town, with buildings and people and a servo!
Heading out of town after we filled up there was a sign 'No gas for next 145 miles' - pity they didn't have those signs at the other end when we started out!
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