Zion! e-bike park

DAY 15

4/2/26 Thursday

Stats: 23 mi. AIS: 2:11 Elev: 1269. Mph: 10.6

We had a good nights sleep in the little RV campground in Glendale. Driving a little south along the East Virgin River. It really is a pretty little valley.

Entering Zion National Park. It is warmer and sunny this morning as we enter Zion National Park from the east entrance. It’s about 52’. Doesn’t seem to be terribly windy this morning either.

As soon as you enter Zion National Park the scenery is beautiful. We passed the most interesting mountain but I guess it’s a mesa… they call it Checkerboard Mesa. Perfect name for it. I first called it a patchwork quilt.

According to our friend John who used to work at both Zion and Bryce the difference between Zion and Bryce parks is ….Zion you are always looking up and Bryce … you’re looking down. It’s true! Zion reminded me of Yosemite where you always look up.

The longest tunnel. Almost immediately we were driving up a very narrow squiggly road to enter a tunnel that is about 1 mile long. There are big restrictions on this tunnel… no semis, buses, long RV’s or bicycles. The tunnel periodically had windows or openings of light. It was not a straight drive in the tunnel it had curves along the way. This whole highway was another engineering feat. After we came out of this big tunnel we immediately started these long switchbacks down into Zion canyon. Just beautiful. There were a couple of road bikers on this side just riding to the tunnel and back.

At the bottom is a junction for the Scenic Drive” into the park or the town of Springdale. At this point you must leave your car in Springdale and take a shuttle or ride your bike up the 15 mile round trip Scenic Drive. By the time we arrived in Springdale it was about 10am. There was already a long, long line of cars at the park gate to drive east where we had just came from.

Parking is challenging. We needed to find a place to park. They have a few small parking lots but they were all full by this time. They have parallel parking on both sides of the road for miles heading west. We found a spot about 4 miles down the road! Mind you this town is long and skinny along the North Fork of the Virgin River. It is packed with hotels, motels, restaurants, shops and just about every place rents e-bikes!

The parking is all paid. Cost us about $20 to park all day. They use QR code to pay for parking. We were not at the end of paid parking by any means. It continued for about another mile further. We were parked near the end of the string of commercial businesses. Alongside the road as far down as we were there was a bicycle/pedestrian path. As you got closer to the heart of town it was a marked bike lane on both sides of the road.

E-bikes everywhere!!! After we got all prepared to ride we headed up the road. We didn’t take the path because there were so many walkers coming up from parking further away. Jim described riding up through town just to get to the Scenic Drive in the park as a Battlezone. We were blown away by congestion of walkers and e-bikers!

It was truly E-bike mania. Hundreds of all kinds of Class 1 e-bikes (you must pedal). Some carry 2 passengers, some have baskets front or back, tag a long bikes… all sorts. As I said every shop rented e-bikes. It is the solution to the traffic problem. Zion is the second busiest National Park in the country. 6 million visitors in one narrow canyon! I’d be curious to know when the last time most of the bikers actually rode a bike. I noticed the biggest difficulty was getting started on an incline. Once they were going it was easy to tell they all were enjoying the freedom of riding a road with just a few authorized cars and only buses. The rule was you had to stop when a bus was approaching from behind. Some were zooming along and loving the speed and some were just casually pedaling along. It was a really enjoyable to see all those bicycles… hundreds if not a thousand today.

Shuttle bus system. Zion adopted the shuttle bus system in 2000. Honestly can’t imagine that narrow road with cars up and down trying to see everything that is vertical! Bicycles were allowed then too but with the invention of e-bikes that transportation has exploded. The shuttle bus in the park has about 6 stops. Most are to trailheads of various lengths and one is to a lodge, visitor center, restaurant and really nice shade park open space.

Springdale also has a shuttle bus system that goes from one end of town to the other… about 4 miles long. It has 4-5 stops along the way as well. Visitors take the bus from their stop up to the park entrance… they then queue up for the Zion scenic drive buses. We noticed from our bicycles it was a very long queue at the park entrance.

From the park entrance the first mile was the most challenging for us. We were sharing this trail with some walkers and first time e-bikers! On full alert until we got to the open road then it was bikers and buses and authorized cars only.

The terminus at the top was a hubbub of buses, parked bicycles, walkers headed to a trailhead. We didn’t spend much time here except to checkout the huge variety of visitors… from everywhere! I did take a video of the scene at the last bus stop and trailhead.

Simms fishing waders and Zion walking sticks. I noticed these outfitted families with full waders and boots and then this distinctive walking stick. These were for crossing streams while hiking. Even the e-bikes had “pole holders” on them. Oh.. the bikes also had rear view mirrors. Some retailer is making some $$ on this wader outfit for sure. This is expensive gear (for fishing). These people are walking a couple of miles and crossing a few streams to keep their feet dry! Mostly they are sitting on a bus or riding a bike in this outfit. To be fair the huge rainstorm 2 days ago had all the creeks and rivers running muddy and full tilt so maybe they were worth it! I didn’t get a photo of them but if I see them next time we come to hike I’ll make sure to take one.

Rock climbers It was nearly all downhill on the return. We stopped along the river to have a snack. Another stop and we noticed rock climbers (4) climbing up a big steep face. We had another stop to checkout the park area.

Once we finessed our way through the menagerie of town we stopped for a late lunch/early dinner at a wood fired pizza joint not far from our van. It was delicious… hit the spot.

Wild camping. Now to find a camping spot down the highway near the town of La Verkin. We found a nice spot on BLM a few miles above La Verkin UT. We had views for miles! It was a rough and partly muddy road getting in. The effects of the big rainstorm were evident in this road. Jim drove carefully and we didn’t go very far in. Several other campers were nearby. Everyone felt the same about getting stuck!

Windy, windy, windy! This mesa we were camped on was windy when we arrived but after dark the wind really kicked up! We had many gusts of 40mph. Our van was parked like a billboard to the wind and it was rocking. Jim turned it into the wind which helped. It was quite a struggle putting some things away when the wind picked up in the dark. We had an outdoor rug held down by large rocks but that wasn’t cutting it. We also had the propane tank out thinking we would have a campfire tonight.. ha! Nope. Anyway Jim was struggling in the dark (and gale wind) trying to attach it to the ladder on the back where it’s stored. He persisted and accomplished the task.

Funny… not funny story. A group of 3 college aged kids (one guy/girl couple and one solo girl pulled in to camp right next to us. We watched them struggle to put down tarps and tents in the wind before dark. Then it got cold and they changed from shorts to pants and warm jackets. Then when it started to get dark and the wind kicked up, the solo females’s tent was not even close to taught and was collapsing. I think she headed to the truck. They moved the truck like we did the van. Then they were out messing with the couples tent. Next thing we knew they were OUT!! Good thing… solo female wasn’t going to last the night. It was really cold.. the wind was freezing. Hope they found a better place (hotel) to spend the night.

Today was quite a day in the park. While it was comfortable sunny and not windy in the park it was cool and windy out in the open away from the protection of the canyon.

Tomorrow we plan to hike in Zion.