Zion Day 3, Hike and Hatchets, Dec 2020

 So the third day we weren't sure what to do/where to go, because we'd gotten on recreation.gov three days in a row precisely at 9:00 to get shuttle tickets for the one side of Zion (the place with all the most famous hikes), with zero luck, and we didn't want to pay the scalpers a gazillion dollars 😡😡😡, so we just kind of came across a trail on the other side of the park, and then Brett was looking at the map and he said, "actually I think this will get us somewhere over in that area" so we drove to this super secret, super sketchy trailhead (where all the shanties and possibly distilleries of Zion are?? 🤨) and we walked on this trail which was fine but nothing amazing until all of the sudden it opened up on The View. Like, the most amazing view of the whole side of Zion that was INCREDIBLE and I can't even really show you because it wouldn't fit in my camera, not even with the video really, and you just can't capture the magnitude. And also it was a very steep cliff. It looked across to Angel's Landing, but was actually higher up by quite a lot.  Anyway, so that was pretty awesome.

Oh, and there were these little thistle plants that looked like tiny pineapples that absolutely made my day. 🍍

We had the entire place to ourselves and just ate our lunch wherever we wanted and hung out for a while before heading back.

It was a little colder this day, and snowed on us a little bit, but generally as long as we were moving we were just fine.

We went and explored the Ghost Town of Grafton on our way home.  It was actually super duper close to where we camped.  Grafton was an early Mormon settlement that eventually became deserted (obviously).

The boys had gotten hatchets/axes for Christmas, so they moved a log over to be their target, and they happily threw their axes all evening.

Super fun trip to Zion.  I hope we go back someday and can do The Narrows and some of the other amazing hikes there.