Zion National Park

When I woke up at 7:22 am, it was dark. By 7:25 am, the canyon was lit up nicely. It was crazy to watch how bright it got in only 3 minutes! The steep cliffs surrounding us blocked the sunrise until the sun was at a high enough angle. After I got ready, I got pancakes and orange juice. Then I ate on our porch.

We delayed our departure until 10 am so Dad could finish up some work. Once parked at the Narrows, we got our gear on. It took a little while to struggle into our dry suits, neoprene booties, and waterproof shoes. Once suited up, we walked the 2.5 miles to the end of the dry trail. Then we fully zipped up our dry suits and waded into the river. When the water first rushed into my shoe, it was frigid and felt weird. Luckily, the booties warmed up the water quickly and my foot wasn't frozen the rest of the hike, despite the 35-degree water. The first deep spot we waded through felt cool. The part of your body that's underwater gets really pressurized. I'm thankful that our dry suits kept us dry even though we walked through water which was, at times, up to my stomach.

Along the hike, there were little islands. It felt like I was standing on a water balloon when I walked out of the water! About an hour into the hike, we stopped for lunch. 20 minutes later, we were on our way again. At one point, the river forks. We followed the smaller fork until we could go no further. Then we turned around and took the bigger path farther upstream. We waded along until it got deep enough that we couldn't touch. Then we turned around. The hike took 5 hours!

When we got back to the cabin, we took quick showers before dropping off the dry suits. The drop-off was quick and soon we were on our way to MeMe's Cafe for dinner.

We got a table outside and all ordered their specialty: crepes. I ordered a Nutella and banana crepe, Clarke got a berry compote crepe, Cyrus got a honey banana crepe, Mom got a BBQ crepe, and Dad got a savory crepe. My favorite was Mom's BBQ crepe, but they were all delicious! After packaging up our leftovers, we headed back to the cabin. We tried to watch Bumblebee but gave up pretty quickly because of a lack of bandwidth. Then we went to bed.

I had so much fun hiking today!