Our Utah Adventure: Zion National Park, Day 2, Riverside Walk

This is a continuation of a travel series to Utah.  To start at the beginning, go  HERE.  The rest of the posts in chronological order are HERE,  HERE, HERE, and HERE!

In last week's travel post I shared all about our incredible experience of hiking one of the most unique trails in the world:  The Narrows.  In that post, I mentioned that you have to take another trail just to get to The Narrows,  it is called Riverside Walk.  Riverside Walk is a MUST whether you take the more challenging Narrows hike or not.  It's an easy, wheelchair accessible, family friendly 2 mile round trip trip trail with incredible views of the Virgin River and surrounding canyon walls, but most importantly the incredible hanging gardens or "Weeping Walls".

The paved trail is located at the very end of the shuttle system, stop #9, at the Temple of Sinawava.  There are multiple spots where you can get off the trail and get your feet wet to explore the river, as you will see in many of the photos.

Even though we were on this trail to access The Narrows, we really took our time exploring.  It was just so beautiful, every turn provoked a new "AWE!" out of our mouths.

I loved this huge boulder hanging over the trails path.  And look at those gorgeous rock walls that were built for this trail.

There are times when the water views are very shallow and calm and other times where there are a bit of rapids and small falls.

Water always brings animals, so we saw plenty of mule deer on this trail!

Because this is a popular trail, there are plenty of squirrels begging visitors for food.  And they really know how to beg too!  We had one adorable squirrel run right up to my son's shoes, stand on his hind legs, then hold out his paws.  It just broke my heart it was so cute.  But we didn't feed him because it's against park rules.

Besides the river and canyon walls, Riverside Walk is famous for its "Weeping Walls".  The walls are continuously  moist due to a constant water flow from the canyons above resulting in incredible, lush plants growing right on the wall!

Every time I see the picture below I think I'm in a scene from "Jurassic Park", but I felt my whole Zion National Park experience was like a scene from that movie.

Here are a few close ups so you can see how lush and beautiful these plants are.  It felt like I was in a tropical rain forest at times.

This Moonflower plant grows everywhere in Zion.  It blooms at dusk and then closes in the heat of the day.  We were up bright and early this day, so it was still open!

If you aren't up to hiking The Narrows, please take this hike at least.  It comes to an end when the canyon is so narrow that there are no banks of land left for a trail.  At that point, you turn around and head back the same direction you came.  You can also spend some time watching people getting into the river to hike The Narrows and see how well they balance on the slippery rocks and handle the frigid water.  You could even get your feet wet yourselves and see how well your balance is.

Have A Great Day!  Amy

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