Ranger Tales
Zion National Park: The Road Through the Mountain
Driving tourWorks with CarPlay

Zion National Park: The Road Through the Mountain

23 stops· 30 min· 24.2 mi· narrated by Ranger Quinn

🎧 Listen in the app

Buy the self-guided tour now, or get it in the app.

🎫 One-time purchase♾️ Yours forever — no expiry📡 Works fully offline🚗 Apple CarPlay
Highlights include
  • Welcome at Zion Canyon
  • Goodbye at Zion Canyon
  • Zion Human History Museum
  • Canyon Junction
  • Not Zion
  • The Great Arch
  • West Portal
  • Canyon Overlook
The route

Driving route · 23 stops. Live GPS playback and turn-by-turn pins are in the app.

Every stop

What you'll see and hear

23 narrated stops along the way — waterfalls, overlooks, history, and Ranger Boone's campfire tales.

  1. Welcome at Zion Canyon
    01

    🥾 Welcome at Zion Canyon

    The Zion Canyon Visitor Center is the west start of this 25-mile drive on Utah Highway 9. Its lot is the largest in the park, with over 350 spaces, free once the entrance fee is paid, and often full by 9 am in summer.…

  2. Goodbye at Zion Canyon
    02

    🎧 Goodbye at Zion Canyon

    The Zion Canyon Visitor Center ends the westbound drive at the north end of Springdale. Its park store and desks keep hours that change by season. Stop 1 of the Zion Canyon shuttle sits just north of the lot, and the…

  3. Zion Human History Museum
    03

    🌲 Zion Human History Museum

    Open spring to fall, the Zion Human History Museum is Shuttle Stop 2 on the Zion Canyon Line and the one spot on Highway 9 where the West Temple, the Sundial and the Altar of Sacrifice line up together. Its permanent…

    Zion Human History Museum guide →
  4. Canyon Junction
    04

    🌲 Canyon Junction

    Canyon Junction is where the Zion-Mount Carmel Highway meets the Zion Canyon Scenic Drive, at the gate that closes to most private vehicles during shuttle season. Zion Lodge and Canyon Trail Rides guests with reservat…

    Canyon Junction guide →
  5. Not Zion
    05

    🔥 Not Zion

    Isaac Behunin, the settler credited with naming Zion, farmed this canyon long before it was a park. Boone tells how the name met a stern critic, what was growing in the Behunin field, and why a family's chickens lost…

    Not Zion guide →
  6. The Great Arch
    06

    🌲 The Great Arch

    The Great Arch is a blind arch at the head of Pine Creek Canyon, an alcove in the cliff with no opening through it. Its upper face shows from the last legs of the switchbacks below the tunnel. The overlook pullouts st…

    The Great Arch guide →
  7. West Portal
    07

    🎧 West Portal

    The west portal opens the Zion-Mount Carmel Tunnel, 1.1 miles or 5,613 feet long, which ASCE calls the longest vehicular tunnel in the National Park system. Bicycles, e-bikes and pedestrians are prohibited and must be…

    West Portal guide →
  8. Canyon Overlook
    08

    🥾 Canyon Overlook

    From the far side of the road at the small lot by the tunnel's east end, Canyon Overlook Trail runs a half mile to a fenced viewpoint above the Great Arch, facing the main canyon. The 2,450-foot trail was designed by…

    Canyon Overlook guide →
  9. Eighty Thousand Tons
    09

    🔥 Eighty Thousand Tons

    On an April morning in 1958, a column of cliff came down beside the Zion-Mount Carmel Tunnel and very nearly closed it. Boone goes back through the warnings and the cave-in that came first, and tells how that rock has…

    Eighty Thousand Tons guide →
  10. Sand Turned to Stone
    10

    🎧 Sand Turned to Stone

    The slickrock east of the tunnel is Navajo Sandstone, the cemented dunes of an Early Jurassic desert that covered the Colorado Plateau and beyond. Small hoodoos here wear dark, iron-rich caps. Ponderosa pines cling to…

    Sand Turned to Stone guide →
  11. The Cable
    11

    🔥 The Cable

    For years, the lumber in Zion Canyon came straight down a cliff. David Flanigan built a wire-and-pulley works on Cable Mountain that dropped boards 2,000 feet to the canyon floor. Boone tells about the people who rode…

    The Cable guide →
  12. Checkerboard Mesa
    12

    🌲 Checkerboard Mesa

    Checkerboard Mesa is a Navajo Sandstone summit of about 6,520 feet, just southwest of the East Entrance. Its face carries a natural grid of near-horizontal grooves along old dune layers crossed by vertical joints. Sou…

    Checkerboard Mesa guide →
  13. East Entrance Junction
    13

    🎧 East Entrance Junction

    Stay on Highway nine for about two miles.

  14. Bighorn Country
    14

    🎧 Bighorn Country

    Desert bighorn are a Zion comeback. NPS gave a count of over 500 in 2018, and a survey that November put the whole population, including groups outside the park, at about 800. The rut runs July through October. Biolog…

    Bighorn Country guide →
  15. Highway nine Junction
    15

    🎧 Highway nine Junction

    In about a quarter mile, go straight through the roundabout, staying on Highway nine.

  16. Highway nine Junction (2)
    16

    🎧 Highway nine Junction (2)

    Stay on this road for about ten miles.

  17. The Diamond on the West Rim
    17

    🔥 The Diamond on the West Rim

    A family story from the days when Walter Beatty led park horses in Zion. A woman from Chicago hires him to take her to the highest mountain in the park, and she hasn't told him why. Boone tells how the ride ended, and…

    The Diamond on the West Rim guide →
  18. Two Canyons, Two Names
    18

    🎧 Two Canyons, Two Names

    Parunuweap Canyon carries the East Fork of the Virgin River south of Highway 9 and is closed to the public as a Research Natural Area. The first archaeological digs in Zion were made here in 1934, led by Ben Wetherill…

    Two Canyons, Two Names guide →
  19. Palm Trees in Zion
    19

    🔥 Palm Trees in Zion

    Boone rounds up what happened when Hollywood came to southern Utah: a star's gray Packard in an Oak Creek lane, an extra with firm views on the working day, and a film crew that looked over the Temple of Sinawava and…

    Palm Trees in Zion guide →
  20. The Painter and the Photographer
    20

    🎧 The Painter and the Photographer

    Mount Carmel Junction lies in Long Valley, where Highway 9 meets US 89. Maynard Dixon and Dorothea Lange, who married in 1920, took a family trip to Zion in 1933 and camped at the junction. Gregory traced the fault ne…

    The Painter and the Photographer guide →
  21. Roads to Rocks
    21

    🔥 Roads to Rocks

    Before the tunnel, getting to Zion at all was the hard part. Boone tells how Kanab's Dave Rust and a governor's offer of prison labor mended old roads in this corner of Utah, why the next governor wanted no more roads…

    Roads to Rocks guide →
  22. Goodbye at Mount Carmel Junction
    22

    🎧 Goodbye at Mount Carmel Junction

    Mount Carmel Junction ends the eastbound drive where Highway 9 meets US 89, 13 miles east of the East Entrance. The Thunderbird complex here has a restaurant, a Best Western and a Chevron, and the Thunderbird Restaura…

    Goodbye at Mount Carmel Junction guide →
  23. Welcome at Mount Carmel Junction
    23

    🥾 Welcome at Mount Carmel Junction

    Mount Carmel Junction is the east start of this 25-mile drive, at the Thunderbird complex where Highway 9 meets US 89, with a restaurant, a Best Western and a Chevron. The East Entrance is 13 miles west. America the B…

Plan your visit

Good to know

How long is the Zion National Park: The Road Through the Mountain tour?
The tour has 23 stops over about 24.2 miles with roughly 30 min of narrated audio. You set the pace — pause, linger, or skip ahead anytime.
Do I need cell signal to use the tour?
No. Download the tour before you go and it works completely offline — the audio plays by GPS even with no bars, which is exactly where most park tours lose signal.
How does a self-guided audio tour work?
You drive the route at your own pace and the Ranger Tales app plays the story for each stop automatically when you arrive, using your phone's location. No tapping, no reading while you drive. Ranger Quinn guides and Ranger Boone tells the campfire tales.
How do I get the tour?
Download the free Ranger Tales app from the App Store, then unlock this tour inside the app. The tour downloads to your phone so it's ready offline before you arrive.
Can I cancel or get a refund?
Change of mind? Full refund if you request it within 24 hours of purchase. If a verified technical issue prevents access, contact support within 7 days for a refund or credit. All requests are reviewed at our discretion and refunded to your original payment method.
Reviews

Be the first to review this tour

Have you driven this one? Tell other travelers what you thought — it only takes a minute.

Buy this tour

Buy your self-guided tour

Pick a date and book online — checkout is secure, and your unlock code arrives by email. Works offline once it's in the app.

🎧 Get the tour

Zion National Park: The Road Through the Mountain — in your pocket

Download the app, unlock the tour, and let it drive with you. Works offline.

App StoreGoogle Play

Buy the self-guided tour, or get it in the app.

More tours nearby

Keep exploring

Olympic National Park Drive + walkCarPlay

Olympic National Park

142 stops· 2 hr 8 min· 233.0 mi

A self-guided driving and walking tour of the ENTIRE Olympic National Park — three worlds in one journey: glacier-capped mountains, the wettest temperate rainforest in the Lower 48, and seventy-plus miles of wild Pacific coast, all driven on the great horseshoe of Highway 101 from Port Angeles down to Lake Quinault. Ranger Quinn guides you up every spur — Hurricane Ridge and Mount Olympus, the freed Elwha River, blue Lake Crescent, Sol Duc Falls, the Hoh Rain Forest, Rialto and Second Beach, Ruby Beach, the Kalaloch coast, and the Valley of the Rain Forest Giants — while Ranger Boone Merrick tells the tales that matter: the Lower Elwha Klallam who freed their river in the largest dam removal in American history, the Lady of the Lake, the Quileute's Move to Higher Ground, the Makah village the sea kept at Ozette, the two Roosevelts who built the park around its elk, and the world's largest spruce. This is the ancestral homeland of eight living, sovereign nations who steward it with the park today. The park interior is roadless, so you drive the perimeter and turn up the spurs; the tour plays whichever end you start from, by GPS. Around thirty dollars a vehicle gets you in for a week; cell signal dies past Port Angeles, so it works fully offline. On the coast, the tide can trap you and rolling drift logs kill — carry a tide chart and never turn your back on the ocean. 2026 note: some roads are gated by washout or fire (the Elwha beyond Madison Falls, Rialto's Mora Road in late season, the Quinault South Shore loop, Staircase) — the tour routes what's open and tells you the rest honestly; check the park's road line before you go.

Coronado Trail Scenic Byway — US-191Driving tourCarPlay

Coronado Trail Scenic Byway — US-191

51 stops· 1 hr 30 min· 94.7 mi

Capitol Reef National Park: The Waterpocket FoldDriving tourCarPlay

Capitol Reef National Park: The Waterpocket Fold

56 stops· 50 min· 36.9 mi

Zion National Park: The Road Through the Mountain
one-time · yours forever · works offline