Zion Nation Park is a well developed park next to a nice (and expensive) town called Springdale. We drove into the park via the famously scenic Utah 9 highway. The highway has an one mile long tunnel built in the 1920s and the road is paved red to reflect the red mountains around it.

The Zion National Park is close to I-15, which is a major highway connecting Las Vegas and Salt Lake City -- so it is crowded with visitors! The park does not allow private cars in its main scenic drive into the Zion valley to avoid traffic jam. Instead, we have to ride a shuttle bus to get in. The bus has stops at various photo points and trail heads. It runs from 5am to 11pm with frequent intervals. We liked the shuttle services very much. It saves us from driving / parking and helps to reduce pollution.

The river in the park is very nice -- it is the only accessible river in our entire trip. The river spreads out to occupy the entire canyon floor at the end of the scenic drive. It is called "the narrows". You can hike several miles in the river beyond the narrows point.