Zion Trip!

After first visiting Zion 2 years ago, it has literally been my favorite place on Earth (tied with Disneyland if I’m being honest). Last month, when we realized my daughter had a full week off school for Spring Break, we decided to book a trip to Zion again! It was just as beautiful and just as breathtaking as it was the very first time. Now we want to try and go annually because we love it that much!

We have electric bikes and it’s just so peaceful bike riding through the park and seeing how beautiful the mountains and the river are. I can’t fully explain it but it really is other worldly and we love every second we’re there. There’s also just something about being in a National Park and being surrounded by nature that really makes time move slower. It’s amazing. Anyway, I hope you enjoy my little photo diary, I will link and leave details as we go!

We drove to Zion from Orange County and left around 6:30 am! We drove straight through as long as we could, stopping for a bathroom break around Las Vegas. It was around 11 am by the time we hit Vegas and we actually wanted to take the kids to the Shark Reef Aquarium at the Mandalay Bay Resort but our truck wouldn’t fit in the parking structure with the bikes in the back (we tried and the bike inevitably hit the roof, yikes), so we pivoted and drove to Bass Pro Shops, Outdoor World instead! It was about 10 minutes away and had an open parking so it worked out, they also have their own aquarium. We picked up some old fashioned candy and let the kids run around and stretch their legs for a bit.

We crossed the Utah state line around 3:15 pm and went straight to Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park, we accidentally came across this place on our first trip to Zion and knew we wanted to go back, our daughter had a blast sand sledding!

You pay an entrance fee to enter the park because it is a state park, and then you can rent sleds for sledding or boards to sand surf while you’re there. It is a bit of a walk out to the dunes from the parking lot and it is all sand so be ready to take your shoes off!

We spent about 2 hours at the dunes, just sledding and hanging out. Before visiting, I recommend checking the website for hours, they change based on sunlight/time of year. Also! Make sure you know where you’re going after you leave the park, service is super spotty once you hit this region of Utah and your GPS can be spotty leaving the dunes to your next location!

We got into the canyon entering Zion around 7pm and it could not have been better timing because the sun was just starting to set. The colors against the mountains were absolutely AMAZING!

After getting to Zion, we drove to Zion Pizza & Noodle Co for dinner, there was about an hour wait, so we put our name down and then drove to the hotel to check in. We ended up checking in and unpacking everything from the car before the restaurant texted that our table was ready. I definitely recommend making reservations to places if you can! There aren’t too many options for eating and with the amount of visitors, restaurants tend to always have some sort of wait.

After dinner, we went back to the hotel, showered, and got in bed to get a good nights rest before our first day!

+ Stay : Springhill Suites Zion; we stayed here our first trip and I don’t think we’ll ever stay anywhere else. Their suites are so spacious and include a kitchenette. This is huge for storing snacks when you have little ones! It’s also close to everything, once we park, we literally never move the truck and just bike everywhere.

+ Eat: Zion Pizza & Noodle Co

Zion Day I

When we’re doing any sort of road trip, we let the day start whenever it wants too. We don’t set alarms and just let the kids wake us up naturally, as they do lol. We had breakfast in the hotel lobby around 9 am and were ready to rock, all loaded up on the bikes by 10:45 am.

Zion has this great coffee shop that’s right across the street from the entrance to the National Park. I tried a few different coffee shops during our last trip to Zion and this one was by far my favorite. Being transparent, I drink chai tea lattes not a lot of coffee so I can’t speak to how good their coffee *actually* is. But the chais are next level! We rode our bikes to get me an iced chai and then rode across the way to enter the parks for our first full day!

+ Coffee Stop : Canyon Coffee House

Once we paid our interest fee (keep your receipt, your pass is good for 7 days!) we went over to the gift shop because my daughter kept asking about it, and well, after about 30 minutes of browsing and then buying some goodies, she decided she was hungry! SO we actually ended up exiting the park and eating at a brewery that was right outside the entrance before starting our day.

+ Eat: Zion Canyon Brewery

After eating, we got back on the bikes and set off for our first day of adventure! It was about 1:30 pm by the time we left the brewery and got back into the park!

We rode our bikes along Zion Canyon Scenic Drive, this is the road that the shuttles use so if you’re riding bikes, you always have to give right of way to the shuttles! If you’re not biking, grab a map at the park entrance so you know all the shuttle stops and can easily get where you want to go for hiking. We rode our bikes along the road all the way to the Temple of Sinawava, which is the last stop for shuttles and the farthest point you can go to on a paved road/with bikes. Once you’re at the Temple of Sinawava, you park your bikes and can start the hike up Riverside Walk, which is a 1 mile dirt path that drops you off at the start of The Narrows!!! (The Narrows is probably the most famous hike in Zion, the one where you’re hiking through water!)

Last time we were in Zion we did the full Riverside Walk hike up to the start of The Narrows and then actually stepped into the river thinking we were going to do The Narrows hike and the water was FREEZINGGGG. And this is coming from someone who survived 4 years of ice baths (thank you college soccer). So we decided against hiking it and just hiked back down. This go around, we were a little more prepared- we brought water shoes, had changes of clothes the whole thing (linking a prior post here with everything I specifically ordered for Zion). But about half way up, our daughter wanted to just relax and play in the river off to the side of the path, which we ended up doing for like an hour and then decided to go back to the bikes. If you’re traveling with little ones, especially on a trip like this where hiking is the main event- I think it’s best to just let the kid dictate what you do or don’t do. Don’t get too hung up on making sure you hit all these hikes and do all these things. The beauty of being out there is watching your little one experience the magic of it all on their terms! Watching my daughter play in the water and being amazed at how big the mountains are is really my favorite thing.

After playing in the water for about an hour, we hopped back on our bikes! This trip was in April and we saw SO many deer and turkeys along the road which was so cool for all of us to see!

On the ride back, both the kids ended up falling asleep on the bike, which was so cute. We got back to the hotel and actually went to the pool for a little bit before dinner. Before hitting the pool, we called the Italian restaurant across the street from our hotel to make a reservation. We learned our lesson the last trip and learned that this restaurant closes pretty early (earlier than other places) and tables fill up quickly. After showering, we walked over for dinner! They have their own little gelato bar, so afterward we left with some cups of gelato to take back to our hotel!

+ Eat : Dulivia Ristorante Italiana

Zion Day 2

Our itinerary was basically the exact same this day. We walked over to the hotel lobby for breakfast, rode our bikes back to Canyon Coffee for my chai tea 😉 and then drove into the park! This day actually ended up being our favorite day! We rode our bikes to the Zion Lodge stop. The Zion Lodge is actually the only hotel actually inside Zion National Park, here they have bathrooms and multiple cafes and gift shops. It sits against the canyon and has a huge grass field in the front. I highly recommend planning on having a picnic for lunch here!

We locked up our bikes in front of the lodge at one of the many, many bike racks available and walked over to the Lower and Upper Emerald Pool trails! The lower emerald pool trail is a 1 mile hike to the waterfall and is totally doable for kids! Our 5 year old hiked the whole way. The path is dirt, but it’s a well defined trail! Our daughter was killing it so we decided to keep hiking and went up to the next “stop” which was the middle emerald pool stop. This added about a half a mile to the trek, which made the total hike about 3 miles total. Our daughter hiked the whole time! There are some steep areas where we definitely held tight on to her, but it is very doable! It’s also such a beautiful hike, I highly recommend!

After the hike, we walked over to one of the grab and go cafes at the lodge to buy some pizzas, sandwiches, chips, and drinks. We sat in the grass right outside and had ourselves a little picnic which ended up being our favorite part of the day! The kids got to run around and there’s nothing better than sitting in the grass snacking after a long hike!

After spending a few hours here, we decided to finish the bike ride by going back to the Temple of Sinawava. It’s literally our favorite ride in the world so we couldn’t help but do it one more time! When we got back to that final stop, our daughter wanted to get out to look for caterpillars. There were a TON all over, so we spent a good amount of time caterpillar hunting before biking back!

+ Eat: Castle Dome Cafe (grab and go options)

After getting back to the hotel, we changed and went to the pool again! Afterwards, it was shower and off to dinner again! This time we walked over to the restaurant. They didn’t take reservations, but we only waited like 10 minutes before being seated. After dinner, we walked right outside the restaurant and into a local ice cream shop for ice cream! The two places are actually connected.

+ Eat : Porter’s at Zion Park (such a cool old school diner type of spot!)

+ Dessert : Bumbleberry Gift Shop and Bakery

Zion Day 3 // Travel Day

The last days are always the hardest! I loathe them and we always move SO slowly in the morning just because we truly never want to leave. And in true us fashion, inspired by never wanting a trip to end, we usually always find a way to impromptu add on something. As we were packing up, I was looking for something on the way home that we hadn’t seen before and well, it certainly wasn’t on the way home (about a 2 hour detour actually), but I came across Bryce Canyon. After seeing photos of it, I knew we had to go!

We grabbed breakfast at the hotel again, loaded up the car- quicker than we imagined because now we needed to rush a bit to be able to make it to Bryce and then back home still at a decent hour.

Zion is the famous home of bighorn sheep and my husband spent the entire length of the trip searching to find one and as luck would have it, as we were literally driving out of Zion, he spotted some up on the mountain side! We flipped the biggest and fastest U-Turn probably on record and swung back to be able to pull over and watch them as they climbed and then eventually walked out of sight. It was so cool to see them and to say my husband was on cloud 9 after that would be an understatement LOL.

Once we finally made it into Bryce Canyon, I was shocked for two reasons- one at the wildly different weather, in Zion it was relatively warm, like at least 70 degrees but in Bryce it was 58 degrees! I didn’t think the weather could be so drastically different between them. Two, the environment was so totally different! The landscape was wildly different than that of Zion and it was so strikingly beautiful and different in it’s own way. The hoodoos were so cool to see!

We stopped by the Visitor’s Center to get a map and of course some souveniers. I’m a sucker for a baseball cap from any National Park we visit and well, my daughter obviously gravitates towards getting a stuffed animal. For my son, I pick a book for him from every National Park we visit.

Because we were only there for a “pit stop” before our drive home, we didn’t have time to do any of the hiking or biking trails. So instead, we got a map and hit all the look-out points that had a parking lot where we could park the car and then get out to go see the view. We stopped at Sunset Point, Sunrise Point, and Inspiration Point. Each location has a parking lot where you can park your car and then walk (Inspiration Point is an uphill walk) up to the lookout points to see all the spectacular views.

Afterwards, we stopped at the the Bryce Canyon Lodge and went to their little pizza joint which was surprisingly pretty good! We never have high expectations for these kind of places. They even had Starbucks brand drinks! I got a chai tea that surprised me as well. After eating, we walked around the Bryce Canyon Lodge, I’m a sucker for history so I like to go around and read all the historical information, so that gave us all a little time to walk off our food and use the restroom before we hit the road for real!

+ Eat: Valhalla Pizzeria and Coffee Shop

It was about a 7.5 hour drive from Bryce Canyon back to our house. We got everyone loaded up and comfortably (snacks and drinks ready to go) and started the trek! In Vegas we stopped again to get out and stretch our legs and get some In-N-Out for dinner. It was about 11 pm when we got back home. The kids had already fallen asleep in the car but we bathed them at home and put them back to bed seamlessly!

Well, that’s the end of my little trip diary! Hope you enjoyed reading a little bit about our adventure!