We left on Monday evening for our vacation with the plan to drive most of the way that evening. We could not not leave until close to 7 pm so we figured that it would take until 1:30 am to get to our destination. About 45 miles to go the traffic on Interstate 15 came to a complete stop and it took an hour before we were able to make our way through the accident. So it was 3 am before we got to sleep.

That late night driving paid off by allowing us to get to Zion before noon. We had booked a room at the Desert Pearl, a wonderful motel. The room was European style and can you beat this view from our own balcony?

On Tuesday afternoon we went into the National Park. It was warm, in the high 90′s but there was plenty of wind to keep it from getting to hot.

We decided to do the popular Angles Landing hike. We were amazed how the trail had been carved right into the side of the steep cliffs. Franz was taking pictures with his new Nikon D300 camera and Ann was using the Nikon D70.

After doing part of the climb we looked down to see how much we had ascended.

I wondered what Ann was taking a picture of.

Then I could see.

The climb got steep where we had to start using chains.

We came to a level spot where we could take a group shot. Since there was no one to take the picture, we took two separate photos and later merged them into one.

It was getting windy so Franz had to take his hat off. We came upon a photographer who was taking pictures of Angles Landing and we asked him to take our picture. You can see the final climb up Angles Landing behind us.

We proceeded to climb for awhile.

It got rather scary with a narrow ridge with steep cliffs on each side. With the wind and trying to carry cameras, we decided to head back before reaching the peak. It was nice to get back to the easy trail.

Categories: Vacation
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