We had my nephew, his best friend and my niece visiting, so we decided to show them some places and activities around the Southwest we like.
Snow Canyon, St. George, UT
Our first stop was Snow Canyon state park near St. George, UT. My niece kind of randomly picked this place because we figured we would not find any camping spots close to Zion National Park. It turned out to be a great find.
We arrived in the late afternoon with temperatures in the 100s (> 38 C). We picked a camping spot and decided not to set up the tent in the heat and with the thread of thunderstorms. It was too hot to do anything and we just found some shade in a little canyon behind our camp site to hang out. As we were resting more and more clouds moved in and we heard the first thunder. When it started to sprinkle we took the car for a drive through the park to wait out any rain. This turned into one of the most amazing drives one could take there. A thunderstorm moved over us and it started to rain hard. The terrain was right for little waterfalls and streams to form and so we drove to the part of the park where we could get closest to the canyon walls. As we where looking around we could see little streams forming and the first waterfalls all around us. Then we remembered that right behind our campsite was a wall that looked like it might sometimes have water. We went back and arrived to a roaring water fall. We could also see the little dry stream beds around the camp fill with water and become fast running creeks.
As the storm moved on the show stopped as quickly as it had started and we were left with a nice lightning show. Since it was still raining we found another camp site with a covered table to cook our dinner. After dinner the rain was mostly gone and we could set up our tents.
The next morning we took a couple of little hikes in the park to see a lava tube, get some views from a hill and see a slot canyon.
Zion National Park, UT
After our hikes we headed towards Zion. We expected it to be busy this time of year, but we had no idea! All around Springdale there were signs that there was no parking in the park and to get in line for the shuttle bus to the main canyon. We decided to skip the crowds and just drive through the park enjoying the views from the spectacular road. After the tunnel we took a little hike to get some great views. To our surprise we found a campground with sites available on the east side of the park, so we settled in. Temperatures became reasonable in the late afternoon and we went for a ~5mile hike to Jolly Gulch form a trail head just inside the park past the east Entrance.
