In March, Markelle, Tahir, Jesse, and I took a little jaunt down to Southern Utah for fun in the sun, good food, and togetherness. For Markelle, this was her first time down since we bought the our St. George home. I try to go any chance I get, which has not been often enough this past year. We went down on Easter weekend, and then I stayed on until the following Sunday. One of our adventures involved a trip over to Zion's National Park. I love to go there, and I think Markelle was excited to do some hiking and running. We grabbed water, oranges, protein bars, and Jesse and headed out. Once in the park, we quickly jumped onto the back end of a shuttle bus as it was pulling out to make it's trek to the top of the canyon. We enjoyed the running commentary of the bus driver about the spectacular scenery before us. When we reached the farthest destination, The Temple of Sinawava, we deboarded and started our hike/run up the trail towards the starting point on the Narrows. All three of us felt healthy, strong, and powerful and we flew up the trail, dodging other hikers and baby strollers. Jesse was in full form, too, and had a very purposeful gait as she ran point ahead of us. After taking in the beauties of this trail, we headed back down towards the shuttle pick up so that we could proceed to the next stop. Our plan was to get off at each stop on the shuttles' journey down the canyon, and to hike as many of the different trails that we could fit in that afternoon. We got on and off at Weeping Rock and The Grotto with no problem, but it was at the Zions Lodge stop that we noticed the "no dogs allowed" sign on the shuttle. How had we missed that before? Well, Jesse is so small that I just picked her up and got on the back end of the shuttle so the driver wouldn't see her, but as the bus began to fill to capacity and beyond, I told Markelle and Tahir that I had to get off--the pressing bodies was causing both Jesse and me to be a little stifled. I didn't think that we were too far from the park entrance so it did not seem to be an unreasonable distance to run back. Markelle and Tahir were good sports and jumped of the bus with me and we began the canyon run. We ran, and ran, and ran. We flew down that canyon. It felt so good, and we all felt like super humans. We saw a lot of the canyon up close and personal and this became a fun ending to a spectacular day at Zion National Park.
