On day three, we carried out our plan of getting packed up fairly early and heading into the park for the morning before finding lunch and continuing our trip south to Zion.  We first stopped by the Visitor Center, where each girl put a National Park stamp in our passport, a tradition we’ve carried out for several years now.  After spending some time looking around the museum, we drove about 30 minutes to the end of the road in the park to Rainbow Point.  We climbed about one thousand feet in altitude, so there was more snow up there, and it was cooler and windier.  After parking, we had to change parking spots because of what the girls deemed to be large, threatening looking ravens.  We got some pictures here, and made our way back north on the park road, where we stopped at several pull-offs, though mostly only Laura and I got out to get pictures and check out the view.  The one natural bridge in the park was a highlight.

By this point the girls were getting cranky, and everyone was hungry, so we made the drive back through the Dixie National Forest and south on 89, where we again found a town of several restaurants that were mostly closed for the season.  Luckily we found one restaurant open in Hatch, Café Adobe, where the girls split some mac and cheese and a cheese pizza, while I had a Navajo taco, and Laura had a chicken wrap. The girls had fallen asleep in the car prior to our arrival, so we went in to order and waited back at the car, where they promptly woke up just in time to wait 20 minutes for the food.   After eating, we continued to drive about an hour to the east entrance to Zion.

Upon entering the park, we made our way through the winding roads behind a line of traffic, and through the tunnels carved through the rock, which the girls loved.  The temperature had climbed as we drove south, so we went from the low 40s with cloudy skies to around 70 with clear skies.  Upon entering the park, we visited the Visitor Center, where we talked to a ranger who had a table set up to show kids bighorn sheep hooves and get them started on the Junior Ranger program for the park. The oldest two were old enough to partake, so they each got a booklet to fill out while in the park.

After making our way to our hotel, the Holiday Inn Express (purchased mostly with IHG points) in Springdale, changing to cooler clothes, and settling into our room, we made our way back to the park, where we got the obligatory Zion National Park sign photos.  Our first visit to the park was in 2012 when the oldest was about 7 months old, so it was fun to come circle and get the picture again with the whole family.  We then parked at the Visitor Center again and hopped on one of the many shuttles that take visitors to one of nine stops in the park.  As everyone was wide awake and in a good mood, the weather was about perfect, with clear skies and temperatures in the high 60s in the canyon, we decided it’d be a good time to complete the largest hike we’d completed on our first visit, the Emerald Pools trail, which starts across the street from the Zion Lodge.  Luckily the girls were mostly enthusiastic about hiking, and did a fantastic job on the almost three mile trail.  Towards the end they were ready to be finished, but overall, we were very proud of them.  The trail takes you up in altitude and along the canyon wall, under a waterfall, and the further into a crevice in the canyon to a lower and upper pool from which the waterfall flows.  While on the previous trip we completed the entire trail, on this one we decided it’d be safer with small kids to skip the upper pool portion, as there’s a lot of places where footing is difficult, and it is steep.

The last portion of the trail coming back downhill offers some of the most amazing scenery I’ve seen in a National Park, overlooking the valley floor and the Virgin River. It’s the view that got me hooked on the place on our first visit.  Back on the canyon floor, we came across several mule deer right along the trail.  They’re not afraid to be near humans!

We were ready by dinner at this point, so we headed to Zion Lodge to have dinner in restaurant there, which has as nice patio with views of the canyon.  Laura and I each had salads, and the girls had quesadillas, which the barely touched, because they were “too cheesy.”  It got cool while we ate, so we headed back to the car via the shuttle, and back to the hotel.  I wasn’t quite ready to go to sleep, so I ducked into Bit and Spur, a restaurant across the street, to try a couple of High West whiskeys from Park City.  Tasty stuff!