Our second day at Zion began with breakfast with the McColls at Oscar’s Cafe, a Mexican-style restaurant just a hundred yards down the street from Under the Eaves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our breakfasts were paid in advance with a modest fee paid to our hosts. Conveniently Oscar’s was across the street from our Springdale bus, a free shuttle that took us to the Park’s entrance. From the Visitor’s Center we picked up the Park Shuttle, which took us up the spine of Zion on a scenic tour only accessed with the shuttle.

Zion was pretty busy in May. The outbound shuttle was full and families and young tourists were everywhere without quite crowding you off the trail. We could only imagine what the high tourist season was like.

The shuttle follows the Virgin River up the middle of the Canyon on a narrow blacktop route. There are eight stops, one of which is the Zion Lodge, a small two-story cabin-style hotel for early birds who reserve before most of us are thinking of summer.

We took the shuttle to the last stop, the Temple of Sinawava, and hiked about a mile up the river and bank. Plenty of people on the trail already about 11 a.m. The squirrels were begging for lunch, alongside signs that forbid feeding them. You could hear birds twittering up in the foliage on the canyon walls, but they were mostly invisible. Tony did spot an eagle near one of the shuttle stops, but we could not authenticate with a park ranger.

 

 

We ate lunch at a picnic table at the Temple of Sinawava, courtesy of provisions brought in by Susan, who conscientiously carried our trash back to the  Zion Visitor’s  Center.

At the Center we signed up for a ranger-led hike on Sunday and attended a lecture on the human history of Zion, from the settling of the Paiute tribes to the 100th anniversary of the Park in 2019.  The southwestern territory was by passed by the Spanish as impassable for well into the eighteenth century, but they created the Spanish Trail in search of the “Seven Cities of Cibola” (gold). Eventually the LDS (Morman) settlers found the territory as suitable for a refuge from persecution.  They farmed the land around the Park and gave it the name “Zion” with reference to the secure city of God.

Our ranger-historian Jason mentioned several other noteworthy explorers who mapped the Canyon, but I can not recall them today. My apologies to the very fluent and dramatic Jason. He will be our tour leader on Day 3.