Coral Pink Sand Dunes and Zion National Park

Monday was another gorgeous drive day. We had a couple of hours to drive to a rather unique state park. Called Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park, we had to travel over 20 km off the main road to get to the park. About 2 km from the entrance, we started to see the dunes. After all the rock we had seen, it was an interesting sight.

Most people come here to ride ATVs through the dunes. Unlike our experience, where sand dunes in Ontario are usually protected, here they are used for entertainment. If you don’t want to ATV, you can rent a sand board and go sledding in the dunes. For us, it was just a place to see something different and camp in an area we could go sightseeing from.

Tuesday we headed for Zion National Park. Zion is known for its tall granite walls. In order to get anywhere in the park, there is a tunnel to go through, if you are entering from the east as we were. The tunnel is just over a mile long and there are restrictions to go through. You can’t be wider than 7’10”. There are also height restrictions. If you are over the width and height, then you have to pay $15 in addition to your park entrance fee. Having wider vehicles is also challenging since it means traffic through the tunnel essentially becomes one way, alternating directions.

First stop was the visitor centre. What a busy park! Just finding a parking spot. An be a challenge. Even at this time of the year, many days before noon there is no parking at the centre and people are directed to the town at the west gate to park and take a shuttle to the visitor centre. The park also has restricted driving in one area (where most of the trails are) and you have to take a shuttle there. The shuttle makes 9 stops along the way at hiking points, where you can get off and on.

We spoke with a park ranger to determine our plan for the day. We decided to take a hike along the Virgin River to a place called The Narrows. It was a hot day – around 34 degrees C and hiking along with river would give us some protection from the sun and be a bit cooler since we’d be at the bottom of the canyon.

This trail is very busy. The main attraction is people want to walk in the river upstream. With the aid of walking sticks and hiking boots (recommended, but we saw lots in water shoes), they can walk miles up the river. Depending on the water flow, they can walk in waist deep water! The water temp when we were there was about 21 degrees C. The park staff monitor the river and weather since it can be affected by flash flooding. We had no plans to walk the river on this trip!

We decided we’d return on Wednesday to see another area of the park that had been recommended by the ranger. It was a 40 km paved road into an area called the Kolob Canyon.

On a 2 km side trail we could see the actual mountains in the main part of Zion.

At the end of the road was a reservoir with some remote camping. Neither of us felt that we’d want to pull the trailer in that distance, although it was definitely remote and beautiful.

One of the bonuses to taking this side trip was the poplar trees were turned and made a beautiful sight.

All in all, it was a beautiful 2 days of visiting Zion. Although hot, we made the best of it and the humidity was minimal. The clear blue skies made the pictures all the better! Tomorrow we move again, hoping to end up camped outside of Bryce National Park in a National Forest campground.