View from a Switchback Along the Watchman’s Trail in Zion National Park
I have been wanting to visit the US state of Utah for a while now but I never really got the chance. I finally decided to go for it. The plan is to visit all five national parks of Utah this trip. I won’t be going on very long hikes so I think there would be enough time to see all of them. Although, I have some leeway in terms of schedule so I could afford to take it a little easy. I rented a car in Las Vegas and drove to the nearest national park which happened to be two hours away – Zion National Park.
Going Up the Watchman’s Trail
Zion National Park isn’t as well known as the Grand Canyon but in a lot of ways it can still give it a run for its money. Yes, these places are formed by very similar geological forces but Zion National Park is on a smaller scale compared to the Grand Canyon. This makes it much easier to visit in my opinion. You can still take as much time as you want here since there are a lot of hiking trails but you can also choose to hit the most important spots and tick it off the list. I don’t live here so I can’t afford to take too long.
I arrived in Zion National Park mid afternoon. Since it was already November, I was half expecting that it would have started to get dark by the time I arrived. However, this wasn’t the case. It seems like I still have a few hours of day light left and I quickly made up my mind to go on one of the shorter hikes here – the Watchman’s Trail. You can see signs to the trail from the visitor center and it is very easy to follow. Reasonably fit visitors would be able to handle this without much problem. Since it was November, it was quite cold but more importantly, it wasn’t boiling hot. While most of the trail is decent, there can be some rough areas which people may need to pay more attention to. I haven’t hiked in a while, hopefully I would have the stamina to make it all the way to the top.
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