Tom and Amber

Valley below Angels Landing

In the mids of submarine syndrome from nasty weather and a lack of trips, we welcomed school spring break. We thought for a while where to go. We had already camped by the end of March last year; this year, even April did not look like suitable for staying in a tent. The passes through Sierra remained snowed-in — and we had already gone to the deserts of the South, during Thanksgiving and after Christmas. Then we did not manage to fit in our obligatory destinations in Utah, and so we chose Zion NP.

In principle I was surprised that this time no child would go down with a fever. It was the forecasters who kept spoiling our plans: as our departure date approached, their estimates got worse, until it seemed that the only nice day at Zion would be Monday. Our original idea was — take it easy on Saturday, getting to talk and drink with Hobbits in Henderson, and on Sunday, once we'd have rolled out of beds and gathered enough energy to disentagle ourserves from the comfort and hospitality of the Hobbit's hole, we would slowly bumble into Zion. Now we were facing a much more action-packed travel plan.

Siblings, posing.

The trail to Angels Landing must overcome some 1,200 feet of elevation gain.

We ate a quick lunch after school on Friday, jumped into our car and sped towards Tehachapi. We made it while Blue Ginger was still open and I had a chicken soup with lots of ginger, for I felt my sniffles coming on. We suffered through the night with much train honking (I don't know why but they sounded extra furious that night); Tom's wishes came true in the morning (a breakfast in a diner with a functional model of the loop), and were knocking on the door of Richard and his family by two in the afternoon. We wolfed down some sandwiches there, I had one beer (Hippo promised to drive the rest of the way), and attempted to cover in about three hours everything we wanted to say.

Tom and Lisa asked to go for a walk with Amber — this female dog has a great influence on our kids, who thanks to her almost stopped to be afraid of canines. It was a success — Lisa found some forgotten Easter eggs under bushes in a park; a professional treasure hunter could not be more happy. Alas, Tom spotted a swimming pool and begged and begged that he wanted to swim, until he got his way.

It was probably well, for there were still some four hours of driving ahead of us, and our well-soaked kids lasted the more sitting in the car. We reserved a room at The Majestic Lodge — but gived another hour lost to a time-zone shift (Utah is Mountain Time) we just fell in beds there.

Squirrels don't mind posing on the edge of an abyss.

Carol and kids on the lookout near the last section of Angels Landing ascent.

A complicated packing awaited me in the morning. In the tourist season, i.e. from April to October, the main park valley is closed for personal cars and people are bussed in and our. A bus shuttle service extends also into the town of Springdale at the foot of the park, where we were staying. I find it a very rational solution. Springdale is a bunch of housese spread alongside the main street, thickly interspersed with hotels, restaurands and tourist trappings shops. The town could not cope with all those visitors moving up and down in their own cars.

For our kids, this arrangement meant the amazing exotics of public transport. For me, it meant careful preparations — we planned to stay somewhat far away from the spacious trunk of our car and luggage in our hotel room. Naturally, I did not manage to get it ideally right. Having left the hotel wrapped in fleeces, we were hot less than an hour later on the parking lot below Angels Landing. Thus a dragged all those extra pieces of clothing in my backpack (Sid was relieved of carrying, for he moved his back on a spring bed, and was hardly crawling even without a load).

We ascended slowly through the trail switchbacks. I think that the kids rather enjoyed the hike. We had a picnic at Scout Lookout, and Lisa gazed with interest over the railing into the twelve hundred feet of depth below us, but Tom said he did not like it being so high. Both complained about being tired. I was a bit enviously watching daredevils who embarked on the last half mile of the hike along a rocky edge — we will have to wait with this part of the trails till our children grow a bit bigger.

Zion valley

Kids received a sweet reward for their efforts — ice cream...

Very cheeky chipmunks loitered on Scout Lookout. These stripy ground squirrels seem very cute and harmless, but Lisa got quite a fright by their courageous behavior. We had to teach her how to chase the insisting furries away. Unfortunately, chipmunks got used to regular supply of food from tourist in this place, and sometimes they get very obnoxious in their quest for snacks. A woman who sat nearby got actually bitten by one of the critters.

Walking down was much faster, but the kids we more tired, too. First we thought the we would get ouf of the bus at the "muse(l)um" and give the children a chance to watch an interpretive movie about the park, but our urge to sit down and have a beer won; we rushed to the pub in our hotel. We each ordered a medium size beer (22 ounces = 0.65 liter) brewed right there at the hotel. We lured junior on promises of ice cream, not knowing that the servings would be huge (we ordered two). We were worried that they could not possibly cope, but apparently there has not been a child born, unable to devour unlimited amounts of ice cream. And since it took them quite a while to finish it, we could order another round of beer.

It was a good thing that we only had to cross the street to our room — pregnancy, nursing and necessity to drive everywhere practically turned me into an abstinent & Ještě že jsme do měli do pokoje jen přes ulici - těhotenství, kojení a nutnost přemisťovat se všude autem ze mě učinily téměř abstinenta - a tak jsem dvě nadstandardní piva docela pociťovala. Na pokoji jsme dětem napustili vanu, nechali je ráchat a libovali si, jak se nám tahle rekreace pěkně daří.

... parents also something cold...

On a path to Emerald Pools

On Monday morning, nothing indicated the promised rain; still we rather packed warmer clothes and windbreakers. A bus took us to the stop named Grotto and we embarked on a trail towards Emerald Pools, which we had never explored before. A path followed the edge of a geological layer a few tens of feet above the valley bottom, opening to beautiful views. Eventually we spotted our destination — a cluster of waterfalls enclosed by steep walls of the canyon. Our camera stopped functioning at this very moment. I don't know why it is that such things always happen at most inconvenient times.

Hence the rest of our hike to the waterfalls is not documented, which makes us feel bad. At least we have a reason to return to this place. A literal water shower came down on us near the Upper Pool. Another interesting spot could be found between Middle and Lower Emerald Pools, where the trails leads under a crevice over which another waterfall spills down. By that time gray clouds gathered over Zion Valley and we started to put on extra layers of clothes. Having been practically down to t-shirt back at ten in the morning, now we were shivering under our fleeces and windbreakers. Hippo and I were already regretting our daring choice to wear shorts that day.

As we ran to catch a bus, it started raining. It was obvious that our journeys in the park were over, and we were glad that we missed the museum on the day before. We found shelter under the roof of the information center and watched an interpretive movie (by the way, very interesting and well made). We really should take our offspring to a real movie theatre " in spite of being quite old for it, we still did not offer them such cultural experience.

One of the last pictures by this camera — Emerald Pool Waterfalls.

Snow fight under Wheeler Peak.

Buses took us back to our hotel where we showered and set out back to the downtown. Springdale features several restaurants, but since we began to have enough of the omnipresent mid-west type of cuisine based on hamburgers and fried potatos, we let the bus driver suggest a new pizzeria named Flying Monkey — the only pseudo-Asian pseudo-Thai restaurant in Springdale gave me a horrid stomach ache a few years ago, and we certainly did not want to risk that. Flying Monkey took our breath away. We're not crazy about pizza, but this one was the best I ate in the last ten years. It most importantly did not consist of a half-inch layer of tasteless red sauce on a thick choking slab of dough. They served draft beer at the Flying Monkey, and we had a few with Hippo, taking advantage of the fact that neither of us had to drive back to the hotel.

On Tuesday morning we woke into a rain; our Zion days were over, but we did not quite feel like going home yet. Eventually we thought up a detour via Great Basin NP, which offers limestone caves, to extend our trip by another day, for inside the cave water drips the whole year, but it does not rain. Taking almost four hours to reach Nevada, we missed a cave tour at one o'clock by five minutes. We reserved our spots for three o'clock and took our kids up on the slopes of Wheeler Peak, still heavey with snow. We had a snow-ball fight and juniors got a bit wet. We spotted two fat marmots. Our camera came partially back from the death and functioned occasionally, allowing for several snapshots.

We could even photograph inside the cave. The tour was a great success with the kids, which we mostly attribute to Ranger Kelly, who kept engaging our children into the story and patiently explained everything. Lisa made a little scene when she began to squeal with fear in the moment Kelly turned off the lights to show us how totally dark it was down there. In the moment he turned back on the light Lisa declared that she was not afraid even a bit. She is a clown.

Ranger Kelly.

Lehman Caves.

It's only an hour drive from the caves to Ely, where we dined in our trusted Chinese restaurant (our first Asian meal in four days!); Hippo and I were wondering whether we should find accommodations and push postpone nine hours of driving home to the next day, or whether to try reach Fallon, splitting the difference. Well, we made it to Fallon in the end (whole five hours later), but it was on the edge. There's practically no civilization between Ely and Fallon — only two small towns Eureka and Austin — otherwise just a desert. We were glad, though — Fallon offered us a night in a hotel with breakfast and the comfort of getting back home by four in the afternoon. We had plenty time left for unpacking and the kids managed to play in the front yard, stretching out after all the traveling.

Hippo went to work on Thursday and Friday, while I had to try to dispose of the trip's consequences (heaps of dirty laundry) and clean up our guest room, which we have been using as a storage room for most of the year. Visitors came on Friday — my virtual friend Marika and her husband (leaving their children back home in Czech, which is a pity, for they are of similar age like our kids).

We took our visitors to Felton to see redwoods, then to Point Lobos, where our kids and Marika splashed in the ocean, and then we went back home, while our guests continued in the general direction of Tehachapi and Zion (for a change) to see some of the U.S. West. Our kids love visits, and this turned into a generally pleasant ending of our vacations.