As their website points out, our next stop, Zion River RV Resort in Virgin, Utah is “Nestled beside Utah’s tranquil Virgin River and surrounded by a vista of vibrant colored mountains.” The RV park is in a great location at about a 20-minute drive to Zion National Park. We had no trouble getting into our site, though it would have been nice to have some distance between us and our neighbors. This seems to be more the norm, we’re finding this summer, as many of the parks we’ve stayed at have squeezed in as many sites as possible.
We arrived in Virgin, Utah in the middle of a heat wave, so we planned our hikes early to beat the rising daily temperatures. On our first hiking day, we arrived before 7 am and made our way past the visitor’s center to where the crowd was already lined up for the shuttle buses.
Zion has a fantastic system in place to move people through the park. During peak season – March through November–the park is closed to private vehicles but offers free shuttle rides that run about every 10 minutes. You can get on and off at any of the 9 stops and every shuttle takes about 45 minutes to complete the loop between stop one (at the Zion Canyon Visitor Center) and stop 9 (Temple of Sinawava.)
On our first hike out, we went all the way to the last stop and hiked the one-mile paved trail (The Riverside Walk) that follows the Virgin River upstream through ever-narrowing sandstone canyons to the Zion Narrows.
At the end of the trail, you can continue on through the Zion Narrows if you come equipped with water shoes as you walk directly up the riverbed — in the river. Those who do continue on that two-hour trek upstream say that the views are incredible. We saw many, if not most, people wading into the water to continue their hike up the river.
On our second day at the park, we got off the shuttle at stop 5 so that we could do both the Grotto Trail (super easy) and The Lower Emerald Pool Trail. There are three Emerald Pools – Upper, Middle, and Lower. The Upper was closed when we visited, and the 1.2-mile round-trip loop to the Lower Pool sounded to me like our best option as we wanted to be sure we had time for the Grotto Trail. Oh, and, I might add, it was the least difficult of all three of the Pool trails. Seemed like a win-win to me. We hiked both the trails and then stopped at the Lodge, right there at stop 5 / 6, and had coffee and breakfast out on the patio before heading back to the RV park. It was a perfect morning at Zion!
For those who may be considering a trip to this National Park, my only recommendation is to plan your visit when the weather is cooler. We ended up cutting our trip short by four days and moving on to Bryce Canyon as temps there were going to be in the 70s and 80s! And we are so glad we did. The day we left, Virgin reached 108 degrees.
[…] left Virgin, Utah–home to Zion National Park–a couple of days ahead of schedule as the record high temps were putting a huge damper on our […]