A Narrows Escape!

Ed and I hiked the Narrows in Zion National Park today. It is a hike entirely in a river canyon carved by the Virgin River. It is almost entirely in water (cold water)!

We were a little trepidacious at first, wondering how our feet would handle the cold, but after a while they became numb to the pain!

It was amazing walking in the middle of the river with the sheer canyon walls on both sides of us!

We made a few friends along the way, indluding chipmunk who was hoping in vain for a piece of our granola bar,

and a very fat rock squirrel, who looked like he had convinced some tourists to share their lunch with him!

The bad news was, Ed bumped his wrist on a rock and the pin came out of his watch, which caused the watch to fall into the current!

The good news was, a nice man coming through the rocks behind us, dug around at the base of the rocks and fished it out! It works perfectly!

After our Narrows hike we also stopped at Weeping Rock and several other scenic spots in the park.

Everywhere in the park is scenic! It has been 25 years since we were here, and we had seen so little last time.

We had lunch at the Zion Lodge, where it all came full circle. We had fun reminiscing about Thanksgiving in 1992 or 1993 when we joined my family for a festive Holiday dinner at the Lodge. Ed, sadly, spent it in the parking lot, nursing a kidney stone. We finished eating and rushed him to the hospital in St. George right afterwards.

The meal today was much more pleasant!

My favorite flower of the day was the Sacred Datura, a poisonous trumpet shaped flower occasionally used as a hallucinogen. Ed could have used a little of that on the way to the hospital in 1992!