Sunday morning comes and there were special plans in the works, we meet up and pile into cars to head off to Zion national park. The popularity of our adventures continues to grow and this time we take lucky number 13 people with us. This is three cars worth.
A special note, from now on you must earn a nickname by doing something extraordinary, this could be from something amazing or something terribly stupid. In a couple of cases it might not be related to hiking at all. The real reason is that I’m lazy. Unless I get something from it, I have trouble doing it and naming that many people sounds like work and doesn’t offer me much. Deal.
So as the cars pile up we look around and realize that in fatman's car there are four of us; myself (yes I come first) fatman, dick dick, and half a smoker. This car is now deemed sausage wagon. After half a smoker finally gets his shoes we are on our way. We stop by the local cesspool of commercialism and try to go. 'nam finally drags his sorry ass out of bed so someone goes to get him but this is where some pure genius is born (more on that later). On a side note today’s candy is a pair of peanut butter cups. I believe it was stated "these will make great shots later. We are now off and running. This car trip flies by as it is filled with penis jokes and the best horrible stories we want to share. A new (at least new to me) term is coined K.W.T. (kittens with titanium).
We arrive early afternoon and begin our walk. Its hot today, a real scorcher, but we only have to walk to a shuttle and head to the last shuttle stop in Zion. We prepare ourselves at the top of the trail and hike on down. On our way I decide to see who would be interested in a lottery pool about how many times bearfood will be falling down. It’s a pretty short walk and soon we are at a river. WITH A TON OF OTHER FUCKING PEOPLE!!! But what can you do?
We plunge into the river. It’s cold and has a pretty good current, but we are young and dumb and there is no match for that. Now we quickly realize that this trip makes kanarraville look like kids play. Which now I realize it was. This river is much stronger and filled with larger rocks to trip over. There are so many people at the beginning of the trip that it sort of ruins the views a little. I like to go places not everyone goes and everyone was definately here. But after about the first quarter mile the pack thins out and we leave the fathers with infants in carriers on their back walking in the river behind us. Also I have noticed how many people don’t come prepared for this, people it’s not a day at the beach. For a while we cross the river in and out of the water is actually a great hike with the exception of trying to break my ankles in-between rocks. some of the highlights include; nam getting stuck in the mud and after snakebite couldn’t pull him out, I go to help and it took some real effort, we took turns finding out how deep the pools off to the side were, most of the girls being horrified by the carcass of some former animal off to the side, finding a great couch in the middle of the river, and lest I forget the cliffs that climb up a thousand feet while only being fifty feet wide and the waterfalls that we must scale.
We get to a fork and have to make a choice; we break and wait for the whole group to arrive. I take a little time and investigate both sides. The left looks actually more beautiful to me but also looks deeper and more strenuous, since we have traveled a couple of miles we decide on the right (the easier one) and fatman says it has better views. For a while it’s a slow trickle of a river but opens back up and picks up pace. There are some beautiful views really amazing things. We cover a couple of small waterfalls, fun little climbs. Head another mile or so in and decide we have traveled far enough overall because it will just continue on farther than we are prepared to travel on this day.
We turn back, bearfood and I are in the lead and traveling at my pace and are making good time. After about a mile and a half we decide to wait for a little while. Wait a little more. Ok I’m getting impatient. then finally what do I see which I knew was coming, but none other than fatman, dick dick, and half a smoker traveling down the river on the inflatable rafts which were purchased earlier. It was truly amazing. As it turns out they spent two dollars on small inflatable tubes except fatman who went with the recliner and they were now sailing their fleet down the river. They inflated them at the fork in the path and rode about ninety percent of the river on them including over small waterfalls and into or around large rocks. By the end they were banged and bruised but had an amazing time on the best two dollars they have ever spent.
Everyone had a good time, total distance was approximately five miles and four of it was unbelievable . So you know bearfood only fell down eight times. We then trekked out still wet and made it back to the car. We had our now standard post Zion trip to Oscars for too much amazingly great food.
On our way back home there was a beautiful storm over the mountains in the distance, what a great way to end the day...
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