Zion to Ourselves

 

How do you get Zion to yourself? Well, you go to a trail that is off the beaten path during a weekday. A lot had changed for us. School was let out early because of covid, so it was now summer break! We had already accepted jobs at McKenzie, so the whole staff knew that we were going to be gone soon. We had a farewell at the school to the students at school and for us it was a farewell to our teacher friends that we had met. Our house was already on the market. Jacqueline had spent a ridiculous amount of time cleaning it out.

 We had some boxes packed and we were starting to sell furniture and throw things out we were not going to need. Our time in Southern Utah was ticking away. So each hike could be our last. When the house was sold, we were out the door and heading back to the Northwest. Today we were off to one of my favorite trails, the Connector Trail. The Connector trail connects the Hop Valley Trail to the Wildcat Canyon Trail. It has a really boring name but it passes through many beautiful areas. You start by looking down into Hop Valley.

 Then the trail takes us across the feet of Spendlove Knoll to an amazing view down Lee Valley. It crosses the plains with flowers and views to the cliffs of Kolob in the north. Jacqueline took many, many pictures of anything she found charming and pretty. That means we got a lot of pictures. The kids were doing great. They were finally at this great age where we could take them anywhere at any distance and they seemed to be able to handle it. My favorite part of the whole trail was when we got to climb up the slickrock near Pine Valley Peak.

 Picking our way up the route using the cairns up the slickrock, it gave us a little off trail feel on an established trail. I convinced Jacqueline to let me drag her and the kids to an archeological site that I knew about near the Wildcat Canyon Trail. They were not too excited when they got there to realize that it was just a couple of logs from an old cabin used when they were logging the Wildcat Canyon area many years ago. This was our turnaround point, but I did convince them to go to a nice slickrock spot with a view to stop for lunch. We really were having a great day and the kids were so easy. Once we were out there, they loved to hike and just be out with us. I felt pretty lucky to have the family that I have. Heading back to the trailhead, we knew that we were going to have some interesting adventures in our future, but for today, we really had a good day having Zion to ourselves. We spent a huge chunk of the day out there and we really did not see anyone else. You really cannot beat that.