One Day in Zion National Park

I've been to Zion National Park two separate times now, and I highly recommend if you find yourself in southwestern Utah to make it a point to check this park out. Both times I've gone, I've unfortunately only had one day in the park, but I got the chance to do different hikes. There is so much to do and see at this park and it's definitely up there with my favorite national parks. Here's how I spent one day at Zion National Park -

The first time I went to the park, we arrived at the park around 8:00am and since the shuttle system was not active due to COVID-19 restrictions, we drove throughout the park along Route 9, hoping each stop we would find parking. Surprisingly, most of the time, we really didn't have too much trouble, so I definitely recommend getting there early if you plan to drive through Zion. The second time I went, we didn't get there until around lunch time, and we had to park about 1.5 miles away from the park entrance and walk just to get into the park. If you only have one day in the park, and you're trying to see as much as you can, I recommend a combination of driving and hiking. We started off driving on Route 9 leading throughout the upper east part of the canyon. The drive offered several different viewpoints throughout that had easy pullover spots, allowing us to get out, walk around, and take pictures of the different views.

After spending some time on Route 9, we headed to the Visitor's Center by the main canyon area. After stocking up on stickers and other souvenirs, we decided to walk along the Pa'rus Trail. The Pa'rus Trail is an extremely accessible trail, as it is primarily flat, and paved and is used for both biking and walking. This is also the only trail throughout the park that allows pets. While on this trail, we were able to get close to The Virgin River as well. The Virgin River offered beautiful green-blue water, and although at the time that we went it was full of bacteria, so we unfortunately could not actually go into the water, it still offered beautiful scenery. The trail total is a 3.4 out and back trail, and is a pretty quick trail that still offers some awesome views of different parts of the main canyon.

When we finished the Pa'rus trail, we then decided to do an actual hike in order to gain some elevation, and really take in as much of the park as we could. Since the weather was starting to become iffy as the day went on, we decided to keep the overlook trail a short one and opted for the Canyon Overlook Trail, and I can definitely say I was not disappointed by the views. To this day, this is still one of my favorite hikes that I've ever done and I think its a great alternative if you're not up for hiking Angel's Landing as the views are very similar, in my opinion. This trail was only a 1-mile moderate out and back trail, although it definitely felt longer due to the variety of terrain. The view from the top of this viewpoint were absolutely amazing!

My second time visiting the park, on top of driving the same scenic route as the first time, I opted to take on Angel's Landing. If you're up for the challenge, this is another great way to spend one day in the park. I'll have a whole separate post just about my experience hiking Angel's Landing, but this hike easily took about 4-hours and was extremely difficult, but also extremely rewarding!

Obviously the most important thing to do when planning a day trip to Zion Nat'l Park is to figure out which trails & overlooks are must sees, and determining the rest of the day based on those. Everybody goes to Zion for different reasons, but I feel like this one day itinerary is a good combination of a few different things to maximize your time in the park. I hope this posts gives you some ideas for your trip to Zion! Thanks for reading and remember, there's always more to be explored :)

-nicole elizabeth