More than any other Utah park, Zion offers an intoxicating primer on redrock country. Whereas one part of the park is a stark, high-desert landscape, the other immerses you deep into canyons teeming with lush oases that erupt with blooms of wildflowers in the spring.

Towering cliffs cut by deep side canyons are the first things you notice as you enter the heart of the park, via Zion Canyon Drive. The rugged landscape doesn't seem very nurturing. But take a little time to explore this mazelike park and you discover flourishing hanging gardens fed by cascading streams, narrow slot canyons with sandstone walls fluted by millions of years of rushing waters, and glimmering emerald green pools stepping their way down mountainsides.

Although Zion doesn't boast the incredible number and diversity of rock arches that define Arches National Park, its Kolob Arch is one of the world's largest freestanding arches. And even though nearby Bryce Canyon National Park is the world champion when it comes to sheer numbers of rocky spires, pinnacles, and hoodoos, Zion's eastern flanks reveal enough mushroom-shaped hoodoos to sate your curiosity about these intriguing rock outcrops. Zion also offers two of the biggest sandstone monoliths known on earth, and Zion Narrows, a narrow and towering slot canyon -- 24-feet-wide, 1,000-feet-deep!