Here are just a handful of things to do on a Zion National Park vacation.

For more activities, visit MyZionPark.com.

Sightseeing

Zion National Park has enough awesome sights to fill your entire vacation. Huge cliffs tower over visitors traveling through Zion and steep cliffs form narrow passages. Red, pink and orange monoliths jut upward in all directions.

Adventure

Zion National Park, with famous trails like Angels Landing, the Narrows, and Observation Point, provides access to spectacular adventures. Zion and surrounding region offers great biking, backpacking, camping, fishing and more.

Natural Wonders

Zion National Park is a showcase of geology. Zion's landscape is constantly changing as canyons deepen to create forests and deserts. A ribbon of green marks the river's course as diverse plants and animals take shelter and thrive in Zion, a canyon oasis.

Wildlife

Wildlife viewing is likely not the reason visitors choose to travel to Zion National Park, but that doesn't mean there aren't wild animals to see. Visitors might glimpse bighorn sheep, deer, coyotes, gray fox, and many other wild critters while here.

Arts and Culture

Although its natural wonders are impressive, the Zion National Park region is also rich in cultural history. Many different groups, with their own traditions, called Zion home. Learn more at the Human History Museum. Culture abounds in regions surrounding Zion, including historic sites, museums and cultural events.

Learn from others who went before you.

To browse Trip Notes, visit MyZionPark.com.

Zion National Park's scenery blows you away
By Mike Cavaroc, Jackson Hole, WY

It was 2004 and I was 26 years old on a three-week road trip with a friend on our way up to Alaska, both of us seeing everything west of Austin, Texas for the first time.

We had just been blown away by the diversity in Arizona and were on our way to Colorado from Las Vegas, expecting to drive right through Utah based on preconceived judgments that there wasn't much interesting that Utah had to offer.

We didn't yet realize what Zion National Park, the first National Park we were ever going to visit, had in store for us. The drive to it was pretty, but nothing that impressed us very much, until we began nearing the park heading east along Highway 9.

Off in the distance we saw some interesting colored mountains that we had hoped we could get to explore a little closer.

Soon enough though, we made our way into Zion National Park, expecting to just drive through on our way to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, and around each and every turn we were mesmerized by the enormous mountains layered in green, red, orange and white.

We made use of every turnout along the road to just stop and stare at the desert mountains that shot out from the ground that towered above us. It was truly something niether of us could have ever imagined and were both in awe the entire time we drove through.

Thanks to Zion, we decided to spend an entire extra day in Utah to explore more, but even that only just whet our appetites for more.


Zion National Park remains to this day one of my favorite National Parks and for the four years I lived in Phoenix, it was (and still is) one of my favorite road trip destinations.

A few key facts about Zion National Park

To learn more, visit MyZionPark.com.

Utah's first national park

Massive canyon walls jut out of a desert landscape

This is some of the most scenic canyon country in America

Zion is a showcase of geology

Characterized by high plateaus, narrow and deep sandstone canyons and striking rock towers and mesas

Everything in Zion takes life from the Virgin River's scarce desert waters.

The scarce water supply flows, resulting eroded cliffs and towers

229 square miles in size

"Zion" means "place of refuge" and this name was given to the park by Mormon pioneers

Nationally-famous hikes like Angel's Landing and the Zion Narrows are here

Elevation in Zion ranges from 3,700 feet (1,128 meters) to 8,726 feet (2,660 meters)

A Zion National Park vacation is an incredible road trip. This region is blessed with several scenic drives and designated Scenic Byways.

Here is just a sampling of scenic drive information we provide at MyZionPark.com:

ZION CANYON SCENIC DRIVE

This is the main travel route through Zion National Park, linked by Springdale, UT, and the park's South Entrance, and follows Highway 9 through the southern region of Zion National Park to the East Entrance. This drive makes travelers feel tiny as they will be in the shadows of the enormous red rock cliffs that jut so vertically and high out of the desert and juniper landscape. It's hard to truly capture the images one sees while traveling this scenic stretch of road. To add to the adventure, travelers will go through a 1-mile-long tunnel that was blasted through the base of one of the huge, towering monoliths in Zion.

SCENIC BYWAY 12

Don't let the obscure, unexciting name fool you. This is the 124-mile stretch that takes travelers through Dixie National Forest in southern Utah. It's incredibly scenic as it follows an isolated landscape of canyons, plateaus, and valleys ranging from 4,000 to 9,000 feet in elevation. Visitors will encounter archaeological, cultural, historical, natural, recreational, and scenic qualities while driving this exhilarating byway. And if all that isn't reason enough to travel this byway, it links major natural wonders including Capitol Reef and Bryce Canyon national parks, and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

TRAIL OF THE ANCIENTS

The entirety of this fantastic and significant scenic byway is 480 miles. Visitors don't have to travel the entirety to get a lot of added value on their Zion National Park vacation. However, in itself this entire stretch makes a phenomenally rewarding road trip. According to the description on Byways.org: The Trail of the Ancients takes you back to a time long before the United States existed, long before Spaniards came north from what is today Central America. Amazingly, some regions of the Colorado Plateau remain today much as they must have been in the 13th and 14th Centuries. Arid and mostly uninhabited, the terrain along the byway conceals secrets of bygone populations, vibrant people who came and went like snow in warm spring sunshine or tumbleweeds at the front of a desert storm. Among other things, explore the long and intriguing occupation of the Four Corners region by Native American peoples.