And the rocks really are black. And it's dark. The sun doesn't reach the bottom for very long

because it's such a narrow canyon. And so it just, it does. It feels more ominous, more like a

villain. This is the Exploring the National Parks podcast with Dirt in My Shoes. My Name is Ash and I'm a former

park ranger and the founder of Dirt in My Shoes. I think that the parks are best seen from the trail

and I'm here to make National Park Trip Planning easy. And I'm John. I carry the kids on the trails,

tell stories and notice all the things that Ash doesn't care about much,

like flowers.

Join us as we show you around America's spectacular national parks.

We're sharing our favorite places, fun facts, adventures, and misadventures.

And we'll even throw in a little trip planning.

Let's start exploring.

Yeah. a little trip planning. Let's start exploring. We have some really fun trips coming up in the next little bit. I'm so excited. I know.

It's really fun, actually. So we're heading to Zion pretty soon. We're going to, oh, I'm going to Georgia's

Golden Isles. That should be really fun. By myself. Well, with my friend, but John's not invited.

She's ditching me. Girls Night Out. I am. We're going to Cumberland Island, which I've always wanted to go to.

And then we're going to hang out kind of in that area for a few days. So we'll see how that goes. But that's a national park site, but I've never been to. It's so fun. You'll have a blast because both Ash and I have started doing things with, like, friends that we grew up with. And so it's like people that know us better than anybody else.

I know. And like we've just moved away or just haven't kept in touch as good. And that's what actually

both of these trips are. One of my friends lives down by Zion. And she and I worked at Grand Teton at

the same time. And we spent every Monday. That was my day off and that was her day off too.

Every Monday just like trying to cover as much mileage in Grand Teton as we possibly could before she had to go to work that night.

So it was like we like we hiked the Cascade Canyon paintbrush Canyon loop.

It's long. It's like 25 miles to do the whole thing. And we did all of that in a day before she had to get back to work. That's wild. And so that's one friend. And so I'm really excited because she lives down by Zion and she's taking me canyon nearing. She's really into that now. and I'm not. I'm not as good at that as I am hiking. That'll be so cool, though. So that's going to be fun. And then, yeah, and then my other friend is my best friend, all through junior high and high school. And she lives out in Florida now, and I'm going to fly out there to go see her. And then we're going to go to Cumberland Island.

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