Zion is heartbreakingly beautiful. In pictures and in reality.
You come in from the desert and suddenly everything changes: towering cliffs, hanging gardens, rivers, cottonwoods, sunlight bouncing off red stone like the entire canyon has its own internal glow. It genuinely feels biblical. Like you accidentally wandered into the location where prophets hear voices.
Every trail in Zion feels like a line for a ride at Disney World. Angels Landing? Line. The Narrows? Line. Shuttle bus? Gigantic line. Bathrooms? Biblical plague-tier line. Just bring empty bottles and sort it out yourself.
You ask a ranger if there’s a quieter trail and they look at you the way an exhausted nurse looks at someone who just walked into the ER asking for a juice box. The ranger expires slowly and tells you "no, it's always full".
And the thing is, Zion deserves the hype. It really is that beautiful. Which somehow makes the crowds even more annoying because you don't get to enjoy any of that. Go? Maybe, illegally during the next pandemic when everyone's at home.