I realize now that I didn’t make a final post about my last two days of vacation. I could offer plenty of excuses for that, but instead I’ll just jump right in and explain how wonderful it was.

Friday of last week was the hike I was most excited about when we left for the trip – the Zion Narrows. At a certain point in the canyon that is Zion National Park, the Virgin River carves a narrow canyon that is not wide enough for a road. In some places, it isn’t even wide enough for a hiking path, and would-be walkers must push through the rushing waters of the river itself.

The weather called for heat and lots of it, so my group left for the park early. We arrived at the path at about 8 a.m. to find that the temperature had barely topped 70 degrees. We were cold, but we knew it would get warmer – and did it ever. By the time we left the park, I was able to snap a picture of our car’s thermometer reading of 110 degrees.

The hike was my favorite part of the trip. On both sides of the river, the canyon walls were thousands of feet tall. The river carved the canyon over millions of years, and our shuttle driver said it still carves about an inch of sediment out of the canyon each year. The rock formations we saw along our hike were amazing, and the river was a beautiful shade of greenish blue.

I was surprised, too, how comfortable the water temperature was. We were hiking through water for much of our walk, and my feet were not cold in the least. But when we did try jumping into one of the deeper fools along the way, my whole body went into a sort of temperature shock – it was cold!

Along the way, we hiked up some rushing rapids (nothing too dangerous, though), and through some sandy-bottom riverbeds. The deepest water we had to walk through in area of the canyon where we were hiking was about up to my knees, but when we jumped into the deep pools for fun, the water was near eye-level for me.

Eventually, the girls in our group got a little tired of walking through the water, but us guys were not. We kept walking while they turned around. But we didn’t go too far before turning back to meet up with them – just to a wonderful grotto with some very pretty hanging gardens and a rushing rapids that was a little too tricky to get around. We decided that was the best place to turn around, but only because we both were so enamored with the beauty of the scenery that it would have been easy to keep going indefinitely.

The final day of our trip was mostly packing up our stuff and heading for the airport. We did arrive back in Vegas a little early, though, and took the chance to drive our rental car down the Vegas strip before returning it. The view along the strip was amazing in a completely different way that the views at Zion and the Grand Canyon. Where those towering vistas were a thing of beauty, the towers of the strip and the crowds of people made me nervous and anxious to be out of there. I decided I wouldn’t mind spending a weekend in Vegas, but any more time than that would be too stressful.

And we didn’t even gamble until we got back to the airport, where I lost $5 and my friend won $188. Such is life, I guess.

And now I’m back. I’ve got a vacation hangover, and I can already tell that I won’t like being at work this week.

(My pictures from the trip are on my computer at home, and I promise I'll post some of the narrows when I get back to my apartment tonight.)