Zion National Park & Dry Camping In Utah

Our adventure continues through Utah – are you ready to hear about our travels lately? Well come on then – let’s get going…

We dry camped off a dirt road that had gorgeous red hills in every direction for one night. The location was ideal – very close to Zion Nation Park (Utah) where we had been planning to visit for some time. This particular part of Utah had lots of rocks so we used them to set up a “welcome mat” in front of our door. This helped keep the camper clean as mud was inches thick everywhere. You probably know by now that Lora loves mud, so she was very happy (no sarcasm here). After hiking several of the steep red and muddy hills that surrounded our camp and trying to follow animal prints which we thought were from elk but turned out to be cow hooves, we called it a night.

The next day, we happily set out for Zion National Park. It is a gorgeous canyon with lots of waterfalls and incredible views from many different trails. It was a beautiful day and so we hiked about 2 miles to several waterfalls and then began a different hike called “Angel’s Landing” which was about 2.5 miles one way. There were intimidating drop offs on one side of us for most of the hike and a few times we had to dodge waterfalls that were making their way down the rocks into the valley. Near the end of Angel’s Landing there is a part that has a drop off on both sides of the path with a metal chain across the rocks to hold on to for support. There is a comforting sign just before you ascend this last stretch to let you know that 6 people have died since 2004 climbing this part of the trail.

After our hiking adventures, we decided it would be quicker to cut through the canyon than to go out of it and then around it. We had to pay $15 to go through the tunnel (that takes you out of the canyon) because we were too tall and too wide (with the camper on the truck) to make it through without a ranger escort. We have more information about this below. We enjoyed this long and narrow tunnel and, after passing through, we continued on our merry way to our next destination.

Continue the adventure with us next week as we head towards Arizona to see the Grand Canyon, Quartzsite and to experience some real dry camping.

Mentioned in the Video About Zion Nation Park:

“Have your vehicle measured at the entrance station when you arrive at the park. Any vehicle that is 7 feet 10 inches (2.4 meters) in width and/or 11 feet 4 inches (3.4 meters) in height or larger is required to have a tunnel permit.” – From Zion National Park Brochure
Zion Free Campsite on BLM location: 37.186611,-113.222806

Items seen in our Videos and our Pictures:

GoPro Camera: http://amzn.to/2ekjvCp
Recording phone/camera: http://amzn.to/2jQwzC5