Day Fifteen of the Cross Country Trip

To start off day 15, we were awoken at around 5:30 to extremely unusual noises. Chipmunks. They did not make the noise I would have expected them to make at all, and it was quite awful to listen to for the 2 hours we laid there and tried to get back to sleep. Eventually we headed out to the northern rim of the Grand Canyon, and spent time there climbing around, and having plenty of people refer to us as crazy, due to said climbing. We then headed to the general store, got some bread and postcards/pocket knife, and then made some Kroger specials. It was here I treated myself to the greatest sandwich I've ever made, almond butter, Nutella, pretzels, and grape nuts. Worth it. 10/10. After this stop we headed to Zion National Park. Zion blew my expectations away, I was amazed by the scenery leading up to the park. We hiked Angels Landing, which was the hardest and most beautiful hike I have ever done. While the first section of the hike is a simple trail, the second is really exhilarating. My calves were definitely feeling it during the hike, but the views were incredible. The second section of the hike was more difficult, as it required you to be able to climb or scramble around rocks. It was made a lot easier by the chain they had attacked to the trail, but it's way more fun if you don't use it. When we got to the top, we had someone take a picture of us, and Mark and I went down a little bit to see the collection of balanced rocks. I added some and then we just basked in the sun and stared at the view. This little squirrel came up so close to us, it was amazing. Coming down the mountain was so simple, we flew down. After running down about half the mountain, Connor and I just took a nice relaxing stroll down, while Mark and Danny ran. It was really nice and we still finished in 2 hours and 42 minutes, which was mostly spent at the top. After the hike we cooled off in the river at the bottom, then boarded the shuttle. We talked to some families and the bus driver got so happy about some turkeys we all saw. Mark and I ate at Thai Sapa and Connor and Danny ate at Cafe Soleil. I got a rice noodle bowl, and I expected it to be rice and noodles, which was apparently foolish of me. It was a salad, but was still very good. Then, because it started to rain, we got a campground and set up the tent. There was another school there, and once again we turned some heads. We showered and headed back to the tent, my flip flops broke, and then we proceeded to slump.