young and dizzy: Babymoon in Zion

Posted by: Bridget

You’ve already read all about Maureen and Dan’s babymoon here. And you may remember when I referred to our own pre-baby adventure in this post. But I left out the details because I wanted to include some of our amazing pictures…which still needed to be edited. Well, it only took me two months to get that done. So, without further ado, allow me to share with you our adventures in Zion National Park:

How did we decide to go here? Well, since neither Scott nor I are very good at sitting still, a beach vacation wasn’t really up our alley. Plus, at 20 weeks pregnant, I was already feeling quite large and whale-like, so the idea of lounging around in a bathing suit wasn’t very appealing! Our ideal type of vacation involves exploring new places, being active, and taking lots of pictures, and Zion offered the opportunity to do all three. Yes, I was 5 months pregnant at the time, but we weren’t going to let a little thing like that get in our way, so off we went on our last little vacation as a family of 2.

From our starting point in Park City, Zion N.P. was a 5-hour drive due south. Although Utah is an absolutely gorgeous place, the interstate that we drove along did not provide a whole lot of amazing scenery. Most of our drive consisted of this view:

A whole lotta farmland.

Not all that different from the typical Midwest road trip that we’re used to. We could see mountains in the distance but no matter how long we drove, it seemed like we never got any closer to them.

Along the way, in the middle of absolutely nowhere (seriously miles from the nearest small town), we came across the most unusual gas station that either of us had ever been to. Well, actually there wasn’t anything different about the gas station itself but rather what it had on its grounds. An unmanned, rundown petting zoo?! Full of zebra, ostrich, llamas, cows, donkeys, Shetland ponies, sheep, and more.

I felt bad for the animals, especially the zebra and ostrich who belong in sub-Saharan Africa, not Utah in late winter. There wasn’t even a barn or anything for them to go into when it snows. Weird and sad.

After our brief pit stop, we got on the road again and made good time to Zion, which is located in Southern Utah, not far from the Arizona border. The terrain has a very Southwestern desert-like feel to it…we even saw actual tumbleweed blowing across the road. The only time I'd ever seen tumbleweed before was in cartoons.

We arrived in Zion with just enough time to check-in to our hotel and rush over to the park for a sunset hike.

Suiting up for our first hike!

Although we hiked exclusively on trails, I still insisted on wearing my gaiters (which are typically only used to protect your legs when hiking off-trail) because I was terrified of the scorpions and tarantulas that are common in that area. I am not a big fan of bugs, especially spiders, but they usually only bother me when I find them indoors...where they’re NOT supposed to be. If I find a spider outside, however, I usually just passively flick it away. But tarantulas are huge, hairy spiders that I don’t want to run into anywhere. ever. Fortunately, I was over-prepared and we didn’t encounter a single huge insect during our stay. Phew.

Our evening hike was great:

Baby bump at 5 months!

In fact, that’s pretty much all we did in Zion was hike. We saw some amazing views and took lots of pictures:

Picnic Lunch!

Handsome hubby!

Hiking while pregnant really wasn’t bad. We purposely chose to go on some of the park's easier, shorter hikes in order to keep it a little easier for me. But this was easier said than done because we were staying along the canyon floor, and the scale from canyon floor to the top of the mountains is enormous, and there wasn’t really anywhere to go but up. I did have to stop more often than usual to rest and catch my breath, but all in all, I held up pretty well.

The only really rough part of the whole hiking experience was the “I-have-to-pee-every-30-minutes” part. The trail system in Zion is really well-established in the popularly-visited areas, and they highly discourage hikers from straying from the path. Not that there’s anywhere to go. Again, Zion is really, really steep and most of the hikes consist of a series of switchbacks that lead you up the side of a canyon wall, like this:

See the trail zig-zagging it's way up the left side of this shot?

You couldn’t go off-trail if you wanted to because on one side of you is the vertical wall of the canyon and the other side is a sheer cliff.

See? Two steps further and Scott would fall off the edge!

To make matters worse, we were there on a weekend and there were lots of other hikers around. So, there was literally nowhere for me to step off trail, hide behind a rock or tree, and quickly pee. So, I had to hold it. For hours. It was not comfortable.

But I survived. And, in the end, that part wasn’t bad enough to influence my overall enjoyment of exploring an absolutely gorgeous place with my hubby. We had a blast and look forward to going back with our little baby someday. There were plenty of hikers out there carrying their kids in backpacks, and we got the scoop from some of them on which brand they like best, how hard it is to hike with a baby on your back, etc… So, we’re definitely looking forward to introducing our child to the magnificence of nature from a very young age.

Although this post is already pretty photo-heavy, I'll leave you with just a few more of this gorgeous place: