A small and rather cool little hike outside Page in Arizona is the Hanging Gardens trail. There is a large parking area at the trail head, and the hike is an easy 20 minutes’ walk one way on gravel and rock with nice vistas over Lake Powell and beyond. If it is a hot day, bring water like always in the desert. It is ok to walk on regular sneakers, it is not a hard walk at all.

We did it just for fun, it seemed like a good little walk just to shake off the miles spent in our car. The hike itself is flat, look out on the way for local wildlife, we saw some cool lizard type things in a small crevasse in the rock, and not to forget mr Goodboy resting in the shade.

The Hanging Gardens gets its name from the hanging plants under the overhang at the end of the trail. It was quite cool to see the ferns and other plants thriving in the desert heat, water trickling from the rock nurturing plants that you normally do not see in the desert. Do not expect any kind of epic Babylon kind of hanging gardens but a nice cool shaded area with nice greenery. The vistas over Lake Powell is also well worth the hike.

Back at the trailhead it is only a few hundred yards down the highway until you can stop and marvel at the Glen Canyon Dam from the Glen Canyon Dam bridge, a grand feat of engineering and also a cool viewpoint over the start of Lake Powell and the Colorado River flowing the other way down towards Grand Canyon.