Once on the valley floor, I parked the car and caught on of the free shuttles to take me about 6 miles to the Temple of Sinawava. The shuttle makes several stops along the way and a person can exit the shuttle and take in whatever that stop has to offer. I went to the Emerald Pools and checked out the Lodge. One of the most famous locations in the park is the Great White Throne.
While riding the shuttle, you can look up through the hatch in the roof and see gigantic bolder several hundred feet right over your head.
At the end of the shuttle line is the Temple of Sinawava. From there I hiked the one-mile trail to the "narrows" where the width of the virgin river takes up the entire space between the valley walls. Today the volume of water was too great for safe passage on foot up the river. Just to stand outside the shuttle and look all around at the 2,000-foot vertical cliffs that surround you was awesome.
If you enlarge the picture below and look carefully at the center section of the rim on the cliff of the rock formation in the center of the picture, you mite be able to see the head frame of a cable tram that lowered cut lumber down from a saw mill that was up on the Plato. The mill was active from 1904 to 1924. The lumber used to build the current Zion Lodge came down on those cables. May of the houses that were built in the nearby towns used lumber that had a very scary ride down the cliff on those cables. (Check the area at the top of the red stain.)
Here is what you are looking for.
There is so much to see and do here that if you have NOT been here, be sure to add it to your "bucket list".
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