Zion - A Kick Start To My Dream Loc

If I remember it correctly, it all started on a small and usual trip to Cascade Falls in MN during the fall season of 2007. Fall season in MN is very beautiful. To get blended with nature during the fall of 2007 we, five explorers, thought of visiting one of the waterfalls on north shore of the great Lake Superior. The place was called Cascade waterfalls.

While roaming inside the visitor center, I noticed a very small booklet on which it was written “National Park Pocket Guide – 25 top national parks!”. The book was more attracting to me because of its front cover print. Even though the place name for the front cover wasn’t mentioned, I thought of getting that book.

While going through the booklet I came to know that it’s a hiker’s paradise called Zion National Park. Since then Zion was always in my dreams as a “To Go” place and was in my “To Do” list.

For an IT contractor like me, who works away from home country, long weekends are Oasis in a big desert of boredom and frustration. While I was in Minneapolis even though the flight charges were high, I had planned trip twice or thrice to Zion. All the attempts were failures, either due to lack of time and preparation or due to my economical situations :) (most of the long weekends we scratch till bottom of our bank accounts for a single penny). All those failures made Zion more and more to the top of my list. Others in the list were Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Los Angels, and San Diego Wild Animal Park etc... And the list goes on and on…

When I heard that my new appointment is for a client in southern California, I was so excited to know that I am getting closer to the top places in the list. But one thing I noticed after joining the project was, I don’t have a good company for a hiking trip. Not their fault :) as most of them were having family with kids. Resh was with me for one year and we visited most of the places in my list except Zion. After she went back to India, I was more and more bored and frustrated. Within a week or so I got new friends who were bachelors and joined here for new projects. Even though they weren’t that much into hiking, they were ok with visiting new places. Most of them had a similar wavelength as mine – in my terms :). Among them, there was this guy called Karthik who was more enthusiastic in exploring and enjoying. He finally agreed to join me to Zion.

(Karthik @Zion, just look at the smile before it all started)

He did not know what he was getting into :). Finally one day we started preparing for Zion for the long weekend of July 3rd. Our actual plan was to cover Zion in 2 days and one day in Las Vegas. But the more we started going thru the travelogues and preparation, we got to know that even though Zion looks like a small park in the World/US map, a long weekend of three days is itself not enough to cover must see places in Zion. We both agreed and concluded that 3rd July long weekend will be allocated for only Zion visit.

This is just the beginning.... To be continued...