Our Zion National Park Adventure in June 2014

It took us a little over two hours to reach Ponderosa Ranch near Zion National Park. It was a beautiful drive and Sharon sat up with Justin while they examined all the beautiful canyons and quaint towns.  The towns were really adorable! Truck and I read books. GG played on his iPad and Sam just went ahead and curled up on the couch and passed out until the next morning.

Ponderosa Ranch is an extremely cool family spot. I had a few problems with it but I almost want to go back for 4 or 5 days and just relax at the Ranch because it had so many fun things to do within the Ranch itself.

Here are the pros:

– Beautiful place and views
– Bathrooms received maintenance after I noticed things breaking down
– So many activities for kids
– Short drive into Zion

Here are the cons:

– back in spot which wasn’t level
– The sewage was FULL (eww!) so we couldn’t connect and dump
– no maintenance for the sewer, they never came
– breakfast was bad for the in-laws – we didn’t get it being in the RV hookup
– front desk were not up to standards (talking among themselves and not helping)
– Run down conditions in the bathroom, showers, and pool (however it was cleaned the next day – do they need more cleanings?)

The kids had a ball in the pool and the slide when they went in. However, the pool looked really run down with signs saying they were going to fix the waterfall portion. I wonder when? It was the start of summer, their busy season. The water was cold but it was 95 degrees so they were fine.

As there were no showers in the Grand Canyon and our RV shower was so teeny-tiny, I had a FULL SHOWER in the morning.

Oh, it was magical.

So I was super happy when we arrived in Zion the next morning. It took about 20 minutes to drive to the edge of the park, and another 20 to drive through the canyons to get to the Visitor Center. On the way, our RV scrapped against a big chunk of rock that jutted out from the side. We still haven’t heard how much that is going to cost us… LOL

I took this picture and posted it on Instagram and said something like “I’ve had a shower this morning and a cookie for breakfast. #happy”. We swung by the main office to get Sam her ‘Jr Ranger’ packet and then we hopped on the bus.

Like Grand Canyon, Zion has an excellent tram system. You just need to park at the main Visitors Center and the trams are stopping every 5-8 minutes up and down the canyon.

Really beautiful place. Since we had the kids, we decided to do the Emerald Pools trail which was said to be pretty popular. It started off as a walk over this bridge. Incidentally, when they are older I want to come back and do the Narrows!

The first pool was a really easy walk on a trail. We all had fun. It was nice and shady too. The waterfall is coming over the rocks in a few different places and the kids thought it was the greatest thing.

They were having a blast.

We took a rest and drank some water and decided to walk to the middle pool. It was around the corner, up some rock steps, through some canyons but basically about 10 minutes away. The portion was blocked off at the end because that’s where the water was going down for the bottom pool. We had to walk across the trickle of water and there were little ponds here and there. You could really see the minnows darting around, it was pretty cool.

We then continued on. However, the ground changed to white sand instead of a path and the sun was beating down on us. With the sun being reflected from the white sand, it got really bad. I was SO HOT and it’s a longer walk (it felt like)  to the final pool. Toward the end, nice people who were on there way back kept encouraging us… “Three more minutes! You can do it!”

We arrived and it was very cool. The kids played and we all got out our apples and water. I proceeded to drink half of GG’s water. I really need to bring more water on hot walks! I just overheat and then my head starts exploding… I’m really fun to be around too. 🙂

 We saw some crazy wild chipmunks who just wanted our food so basically came up and sat in our laps.

We then turned around and went back. There was a nice center at the bottom of the trail with a restaurant and other things. We got lunch and there was also a Jr Ranger talk which was lucky because Sam needed to get her ‘talk’ signed off on by a Ranger. So J and I sat on the grass behind Sam and ate lunch while we listened to the Ranger. Sam was now convinced she was going to be a Park Ranger when she grew up. The husband was wildly happy.

After lunch we hopped on the tram and continued up the canyon. I think we stopped in two places but the one that was really cool was ‘Weeping Rock‘. Since the rock was sandstone, it absorbed all the water on the top of the plain and in this particular spot, water just tricked out from the rock. It was pretty cool.

This was the view from Weeping Rock.

After that, we hopped on the homeward bound tram. First, we turned in Sam’s packet and she got her 2nd Jr Ranger badge. She displayed those so proudly. Then, headed back to the RV.

We got back around 5 and the kids HAD to go jump in the pool and go down the slide. So we went down there and did that a few times. We also tried to get our clothes washed and ZOMG, please kill me from crazy people monopolizing the laundry. A very nice woman had 4 grandkids, I guess, and she kept up at least 8 loads of laundry. Since there were only two washers and three dryers… it took awhile. So annoying. They need a lot more washers if they are going to promise on their website that they have them available.

I have to jump in and say how cool it was listening to the people talk around Ponderosa and also the Grand Canyon. So many people from different countries, it was awesome.

While we were negotiating laundry time, we BBQ’d up some chicken… made s’mores from the grill, and opened a bottle of wine. It was actually Sharon’s birthday! So we had a little birthday party and grabbed her presents out from where we had hidden them. It was fabulous.

The next morning (we forgot about the time change again – and it actually changed this time but our phones didn’t update!) so we had an extra hour to get breakfast and pack up. Then, we continued on our journey. We wanted to try to make it up to Salt Lake City but I knew we could drive farther.

Well, I knew the husband could drive farther since he was doing all the driving. 🙂 But that’s for the next post! Read our Travel Day post…