This weekend was excellent. Josh, Brady, Lynette, Christine, and I drove down to Cedar City on Friday evening and met Brant, Coralee, and Steve down there. We stayed at Coralee's grandmother's house which is usually unoccupied. Saturday morning we woke up early and drove to Zion National Park. After parking at the visitor's center we took the park shuttle to the Temple Sinawava sight and proceeded down the Riverside Trail. At the end of the Riverside Trail is the mouth of The Narrows. If you're unfamiliar with the location, it is a canyon, mostly sandstone, that was cut out by the river there. The walls are about 300 feet high, and the floor is the river. The water level is usually around knee height, though varies a lot in a few places. You can hike straight up the river and enjoy the canyon. We hiked in and took a branch to see a waterfall and then turned around and went back. It took us 4 or 5 hours, and was probably a few miles. I'll get some of the pictures from Josh and Brady and hopefully put some up here before too long.


We drove back this afternoon. We left Cedar City around 2, and made it up to mile 111 on I-15, at which point we were the first in line to be forced off the highway. I-15 was being closed for about 100 miles due to the crazy big wildfire that has been happening for the last bit. Apparently, the crews working couldn't contain it and it jumped the highway. So we had to back track to mile 95 and follow SR-20 to US-89 and follow that up until it hooked on to I-70, then we followed that East until Salina, and then took US-50 back to I-15. Luckily we were near the front of the line that had to take the detour so we managed to keep ahead of the worst of the traffic. It only added about an hour and 15 minutes to our trip. I kind of wanted to see the burn, but all we saw was a lot of smoke settling into the valley in which we were driving. On the way down, Friday, we saw the fire off in the distance, so it really cruised across the brush to get over the highway by Sunday.

Here's a picture, courtesy of the KSL article linked above:


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