Driving from Las Vegas to Zion takes you from Nevada, through Utah, into Arizona and back into Utah, which involves numerous time changes and time consuming vehicle checks.
Waking early we headed to Zion National Park and went straight towards Angels Landing. This is a peak reached by dozens of switchbacks followed by a long hike straight upwards.
As it turns out this is a false peak about two-thirds of the way up and the real peak needed to be reached using a series of steps and chains. I rather surprised myself and everyone else by doing this quite easily despite the bird half way up looking at me hungrily.
Having just climbed a mountain the obvious next thing to do was an eight mile hike up to some Emerald Pools further down the valley. These were underwhelming, but we felt quite smug at having done both trails in one day.
My parting thought was that they should get a sculptor to fashion a ferrous statue of a big cat, then you’d have Iron, like a Lion, in Zion… oh, maybe that’s why they haven’t.