Riverside Trail, Temple of Sinawava
We drove north on the park road this morning. It is the first day that the shuttles were not running, and it is easy to see why they are such an advantage. There are very few parking spaces available. I took the video camera with us today, and we first stopped at the Court of the Patriarchs to get some video of the mountains in the early morning light. Then as we drove by the Weeping Wall parking lot we saw some “wild” turkeys in the bush, so drove to a spot where we could get off the road and walked back. I’m not sure if they are truly wild turkeys, or just feral turkeys; however, they definitely were not modern domestic turkeys.
By this time there was no space let in the Weeping Wall parking lot, so we continued on to the Temple of Sinawava area. Here there were just a few spaces left, and we got one of the last ones. We then walked along the riverside trail. It is pretty flat and paved, and heavily used. We stopped often as I was taking lots of video. Several people passed us carrying wooden hiking staves, and they were wearing special wading shoes and dry suit pants. We saw why when we got to the end of the trail, as they continued upstream wading in the river. You can go quite a way up the canyon by following the river, but the water would be pretty cold.
We ate our lunch in a nice sunny spot as it was a bright and warm day. The GPS obviously did not work properly in the narrow canyon, as it recorded our walk as 16 km, but the path was nowhere near correct. We didn’t walk anywhere near that far – maybe we went 6 km at the most. When we got back I walked to the edges of the campgrounds to get some more video of the mountains. The cliffs are spectacular. On the way back I spoke to the campground volunteer, and he pointed out an arch to me high up on the mountain. It is very hard to see and it is very thin up near the top of one of the peaks. It must be quite large as it is a long way away.