Since my previous big loop around the country, I made a very important purchase… I bought a new laptop so I wouldn’t have to keep using my 8-year-old Chromebook that can’t actually run any software except for web apps (and sometimes, even that is a stretch). This affects my road trip for one big rea­son: I’m way more willing to make intermissionary stops between longer destinations.

Previously, I would only drive from major city to major city, then spend about a week (or more) at each destination. Upon arrival, I would bring in my entire desktop computer and set up my full workstation—two monitors, speakers, subwoofer, condenser microphone, peripherals, and all. Any time I did­n’t have my full computer setup meant I couldn’t work at 100% productivity and efficiency, so I avoided situations where a stop would be so short that it would be too much of a hassle to set up my entire computer.

Now that I have a Windows laptop with far greater power than a Chromebook that’s reaching a decade of age, I’m much more willing to take short stops in between major cities—and today’s hiking trip is a great example of that. Between Zion National Park and Grand Junction, I decided to make two short stops, the first being at Richfield, Utah.

Richfield is a small city just shy of 8,000 people in Sevier County, and the most populous city in central Utah south of the Provo–Orem Metropolitan Area. On the way to Richfield on Interstate 70 was the Fremont Indian State Park and Museum.

It seemed like I could just park anywhere in open space and go hiking, but for the sake of helping support state parks, I voluntarily paid the US$10 ad­mis­sion fee and checked out the museum exhibits prior to my hike. The museum was obviously fairly underwhelming compared to some of the major ones I’ve visited, but considering how limited their resources are and how “out in the middle of nowhere” this museum felt, it wasn’t actually that bad.

The first trail I did was an easy, paved one right beside the museum, called the Parade of Rock Art Trail.

After circling around, I made my way over to the Canyon Overview Trail.

On the intersection of Coyote Canyon Trail, there was a Meditation Spiral. I didn’t do any meditating because I was a little crunched on time and needed to make it to my hotel in Richfield by a certain time to attend a conference call, but I feel like walking the spiral would’ve made me dizzy anyway.

Afterwards, I connected onto the Hidden Secrets Trail. This was split into the Upper and Lower Hidden Secrets Trails, and I’m not sure which ones I hiked, but there was a ton of mud here from recent snowfall, so I scrambled around taking any path I could to make it to the end.

Once I got to the end of the Hidden Secrets Trails, I transferred over to the Court of Ceremonies Trail, a short but steep trail that had great views and a path directly back to the museum parking lot.

After my hike, I took the scenic drive on Clear Creek Canyon Road and snapped some more photos along the way.

I don’t have a GPS map of my hike because I wasn’t going to activate tracking until after the museum, but then proceeded to forget to activate it at all after seeing all the exhibits.

These photos don’t really do the view justice—the towering rocks and snow-covered mountains are an amazing sight, and this area had some of the clean­est air I’ve breathed.

I’ve always wanted to live in a high-rise condo as my main residence, but after I first started my journey across the country, I partially changed my mind—I saw how amazing these hidden areas of nature were, and at the very least, if I didn’t live out in a place like this as my primary residence, I definitely want­ed a second home in a place far away from bustling cities. Seeing more areas like this, such as the Fremont Indian State Park, is reinforcing my wish­es of wanting to spend at least half my life out in the open, nestled among trees and mountains.

The first major stop of my road trip was at Zion National Park. After purchasing an interagency unlimited-use annual pass for US$80.00 for nationwide ac­cess to national parks, I routed my road trip path through as many national parks that I could reasonably visit to get as much value as I could out of my annual pass, and because I enjoyed my visit to the Grand Canyon.

The system they currently have for accessing Zion National Park is an absolute disaster, and I am tilted on behalf of the people who don’t have an annual pass and have to pay upwards of $35 to get in.

Similar to the Grand Canyon, Zion National Park usually has shuttle service that picks people up from large parking areas and brings them to hiking trails and other points of interest in the park. However, during off-season times of the year, the shuttle service is not available or only partially available, and you have to drive di­rect­ly to these areas. Now is considered an off-season time, so the shuttle only runs on the weekends and not during the week­days.

The “main” area of Zion National Park is accessible through Zion Canyon Road, the entrance of which is right by Canyon Junction Bridge. There are small parking lots available down Zion Canyon Road, but the availability is nowhere near sufficient to accommodate all the tourists coming in via their own personal vehicles. Once a cer­tain number of cars go in and there is no more parking, they will completely block off access to Zion Canyon Road.

From here, you have two choices: You can either park your vehicle on Zion Park Boulevard (the intersection of Zion Canyon Road) and wait for Zion Can­yon Road to open back up, or you can walk to your desired hiking trail.

The problem with walking is that Zion Canyon Road is pretty long, and if I were to walk to the trailhead that I wanted to hike (which was Angel’s Land­ing), I would’ve to add three miles to my hike in each direction just to get to and from the trailhead. I also couldn’t manage to find a realistic place to wait for the road to open back up, because there were already basically 30 other cars all doing the same thing, occupying every single possible emp­ty space that isn’t directly in the middle of the road (including spaces with signs that say “No Parking” directly next to them).

I tried hiking at Zion National Park three days, and only managed to get into the main hiking area during one of those days. The other days, I just took the scenic drive on Zion–Mount Carmel Highway, but even that wasn’t great, because the area close to the east entrance of Zion National Park was also ex­tremely congested and had no parking. So basically, instead of going to Zion to hike, I basically went to Zion to drive and then go back to my hotel.

 
Now, with that being said, the one day that I did manage to get in, it was amazing. One of my friends—the friend who actually introduced me and got me interested in hiking in the first place—joined me for that day, and he had been to Zion before, so he was able to show me the most interesting areas.

The two trails that I wanted to do were Observation Point and Angel’s Landing. Observation Point was closed due to a rockslide that damaged the trail, as well as a risk of another rockslide in the same area. Angel’s Landing was apparently covered in ice, and we weren’t prepared with microspikes, so I de­cided to postpone that trail to a following day after I could either rent the proper equipment or go later on in the day after the sun came out (though, as I said above, that never happened, because I was never actually able to reach the Angel’s Landing trailhead again due to congestion).

Instead, we decided to drive all the way out to the Temple of Sinawava and do the Riverside Walk up to the Narrows.

We made it to the end of the trail and saw some people continuing on into the Narrows through the North Fork Virgin River, though we obviously did not, as we were not prepared with the proper equipment to wade through freezing cold water.

After making it back to the Temple, we drove back south on Zion Canyon Road and navigated up the hairpin turns on the Zion–Mount Carmel High­way up to the Zion–Mount Carmel Tunnel. Because my friend was driving, I was able to get some decent shots of the scenery along the scenic drive.

Once we got to the tunnel, traffic was backed up. After observing, I found out that they close one side of the tunnel and make it one-way whenever there is an oversized vehicle (like an RV or a particularly wide truck) coming through, because the tunnel is relatively narrow and a vehicle of commercial width would impede the opposite flow of traffic.

After we made it through the tunnel, we found a parking spot nearby and hiked the Pine Creek Canyon Overlook via the Canyon Overlook Trail. To me, it was a fairly leisurely and pleasant walk, but there were some parts that were tricky for beginners, like sections of narrow path next to a bluff and a bridge directly above a large drop, so it was fun seeing tourists get irrationally terrified trying to complete the trail.

At the summit, I was able to capture a photo of a squirrel, which reminded me of the squirrel I met at the top of Cathedral Rock at Mount Charleston in Clark County, Nevada. That squirrel came up to me to feed off some salted mixed nuts, but this squirrel in Zion was a bit more shy, and it bolted off when I got closer.

After we made it back down to the trailhead, we saw some rams peacefully sunbathing and watching the tourists scramble up the nearby rocks.

Ignoring the logistical nightmare of there being way too many vehicles and not being able to find parking, Zion National Park itself was great. Once shut­tle service resumes and you’re able to actually explore the entire park, I think this is definitely a trip worth taking (and I imagine everyone else thinks the same, considering how packed it was).

I’m disappointed that I didn’t get to hike Angel’s Landing, especially because they’re changing it to a lottery system beginning April 1 where you have to buy a raffle ticket and then get lucky and have your ticket picked in order to gain admission to the trail. So, this was basically my last opportunity to be able to go and get in a “guaranteed” hike there… though I guess it wasn’t guaranteed, seeing as the access road was closed.

If I get an opportunity to return to Zion, and if I don’t win the raffle to hike Angel’s Landing, and Observation Point hasn’t reopened yet, then I actually want to hike the Narrows, rather than just going up to it and looking at it. If I end up going during the summer, it may be feasible just go in regular shoes that I’m fine with getting wet (similar to how I was just wading through water when I was at the Indian Canyons in Palm Springs), or possibly even bare-footed, as I’ve seen photos of people doing it without footwear at all.

After heading out of Southern California last week, I stopped by Las Vegas to take care of some errands before leaving for the next segment of my road trip—I checked my PO box, got a haircut, exchanged some stuff from my storage unit, took a routine blood test, visited my chiropractor, attended a class at the university, and met up with some friends. Yesterday, I set out towards Utah, the first state in my next loop around the country.

My first major destination is going to be Zion National Park, but on the way there, I decided to spend a night in St. George to break up the drive into shorter segments. After checking out of St. George, I took a stop at La Verkin on my way to Virgin, a town on Utah State Route 9 along the way to Zion.

To the west of La Verkin is Confluence Park in the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve, part of the greater Red Cliffs National Conservation Area. I decided this would be a great place to take a hike while waiting for check-in time at my next hotel.

This was an interesting hike, as the beginning of the trailhead was nestled between a few vacation condos next door to a coffee shop, and within several hundred feet, there was a massive descent of a few hundred feet of elevation down into the canyon. From there, the hiking trail followed alongside the Virgin River and continued northwest.

The out-and-back to the intersecting point of the Virgin River and La Verkin Creek was a little over three and a half miles, which included a wrong turn that I took partway down the trail. I thought this was a great hike; I haven’t really been on too many where you descend directly into a canyon right at the beginning of the trail, and are surrounded by towering rock formations throughout the hike.