Road Trip: Utah
Zion National Park
Last Thanksgiving, Keith and I decided to take a trip to Utah. At that point, we had been working from home, eating at home, and doing everything else at home for the last eight months, and we were going stir-crazy! We couldn’t have Thanksgiving with our families due to the pandemic (we have many high-risk people in our families), so we decided to spend the week outdoors, hiking the National Parks in Utah. Over the years, we have really grown to admire and appreciate National Parks and have made it a goal to visit as many as we can. Utah happened to have an impressive amount of FIVE National Parks, so off we went!
A little note about traveling during that time of year. We were both very anxious about traveling on a plane and nearly cancelled the trip as late as 2 days before we left. But, as two young people in good health, and being in contact only with each other for 99% of the time at that point, we decided to go and take every safety precaution available. We flew with Delta and we were so impressed with how strict they were with everyone on the plane wearing masks the entire time! As for us, we double-masked, brought a whole tub of sanitizing wipes to wipe everything down before we touched anything, and sanitized like crazy. We only booked hotels that had contactless entries, wiped everything down as soon as we entered the room, and went to the grocery store to basically make most of our meals to avoid eating in restaurants. When we ran out of food, we ordered take-out/delivery. As soon as we returned home, we both got tested (with negative results!) and quarantined for another couple of weeks.
Overall, I’m glad that we went. It was good to have a change in scenery and to just refresh our minds.
ZION NATIONAL PARK
We flew from Atlanta to Las Vegas, rented a car, and drove straight to La Verkin, Utah, just outside of Zion National Park. That evening, we went to a nearby grocery store and bought bread, sliced cheese and meats, fruits and veggies to make our own salads and sandwiches. We did pack a small cooler bag and some food containers so we can park our own lunches and dinners. The next day, we got up relatively early and started to explore Zion! What we didn’t know was that half of Zion can only be accessed through a shuttle bus - for which the tickets had to be purchased ahead of time. We managed to get a couple of late tickets thanks to a very helpful park ranger, so our first day was definitely not a lull (like there could be a lull at Zion).
Our first two days were spent at Zion, and we still didn’t get to see many things! We did hike quite a bit on both days. I felt that we were lucky to be in Zion in November, when the tree foliage has turned to fall colors. It was all so beautiful. Out of all the National Parks we visited that week, Zion is Keith’s favorite. So much so that we went back to Zion at the tail end of our trip.
BRYCE CANYON NATIONAL PARK
We drove from Zion through the Dixie National Park and headed to Bryce Canyon National Park. I did some research about Bryce Canyon and the hoodoos that exist there and thought it sounded interesting, so I was pretty excited to see what it was all about. Here’s a little snippet of what hoodoos are all about, from Utah National Parks Trips:
“The word “hoodoo” means to bewitch, which is what Bryce Canyon’s rock formations surely do. The hoodoos we are talking about are tall skinny shafts of rock that protrude from the bottom of arid basins. Hoodoos are most commonly found in the High Plateaus region of the Colorado Plateau and in the Badlands regions of the Northern Great Plains. While hoodoos are scattered throughout these areas, nowhere in the world are they as abundant as in the northern section of Bryce Canyon National Park.
In common usage, the difference between Hoodoos and spires is that hoodoos have a variable thickness often described as having a “totem pole-shaped body.””
I was NOT disappointed. These hoodoos are sometimes as tall as a person, and some are are the height of a ten-fifteen story buildings! We hiked down to see them from the bottom up, and the best part of the hike was definitely the descent and ascent. The ascent was difficult as it was very steep, but totally worth it. From these heights, you can see the hoodoos surrounding you in detail - in some, you can even clearly see the lines where some of the formation colors start to change.
I wish we spent more time at Bryce Canyon - but I’m glad we did the 3 1/2 mile loop hike. Bryce Canyon is definitely now my absolute favorite National Park (sorry Acadia!).
DIXIE NATIONAL FOREST / GRAND STAIRCASE ESCALANTE NATIONAL MONUMENT / CAPITOL REEF NATIONAL PARK
After a few hours of hiking at Bryce Canyon, we kept driving through Fishlake National Forest on our way to Moab. We took the scenic route as we typically tend to do during these trips, and ended up driving for almost five hours. We did manage to pass some amazing sceneries, including the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. We didn’t stop and fully explore, but made a mental note that someday we will come back and do just that.
We had hoped to reach Capitol Reef National Park at daylight, but we ended up stopping for pie earlier which delayed us a little bit. We ended up driving through Capitol Reef at night - which was definitely an experience. Driving through giant rock formations, with no lighting apart from the car light, and no other cars around…put us on edge a little because we had to be so careful to not hit an animal (there were so many Cows Crossing signage). At one point we did see a deer or a goat (it was very dark and hard to tell) cross in front of us. I didn’t have very many photos at all of this part of the trip, mostly because we were driving and we didn’t have a good camera. It was though, really beautiful to see the silhouette of the formations against a dark sky full of stars.
MOAB: ARCHES NATIONAL PARK
We arrived in Moab late at night and fell asleep almost as soon as we got into our room. The next morning, we ate our breakfast and went straight to Arches National Park. We were so excited to go that we got to the park 10 minutes before they opened - and thanks to our America the Beautiful National Park Pass, we were able to go straight through without stopping at ticketing. Side note: if you plan on visiting many National Parks in a year, highly recommend getting this annual pass. We actually saved the cost of 2 parks already by the end of this trip, and we plan on making more trips this year to other National Parks.
So, Arches. Yes - it’s as neat as it is on the pictures! Seeing the arches in photos do not really do it justice - they are so much more impressive in real life. We did a 2-mile loop hike and a 4-mile hike to the Delicate Arch (the one that can be found on the Utah license plate), and by the end of the day we were exhausted. We spent the rest of the day eating take-out (we ran out of groceries at this point) from another Thai restaurant, and started watching the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe (in chronological order, of course) which was pretty fun! Watching these movies became almost a ritual at that point - we’d hike during the day and watch movies at night.
MOAB: CANYONLANDS NATIONAL PARK
On our second day in Moab, we went to Canyonlands National Park. We did a few short hikes here, but we mostly drove to certain viewpoints. I will say, Canyonlands is a HUGE park (divided into two sections) and I kind of wish we visited this park first before Arches. We spent all of our time on the Island in the Sky area of the park, which was as nice as the name sounds. I’m sure that at one point in life we will come back and visit the other half of Canyonlands…maybe we won’t be so hike’d out, next time.
BACK TO ZION: SEVIER RIVER, FISHLAKE NATIONAL FOREST, PIUTE RESERVOIR
After Canyonlands, we went back to our room and started to pack for our next stop, which was supposed to be the Grand Canyon. Then we caught wind that since it would be the day after Thanksgiving, the Grand Canyon is expected to be at full capacity and since we’ve tried so hard to avoid crowds, we decided to go back to Zion. We took a different scenic route, which took us through Fishlake National Forest where we saw snow and a very hungry squirrel eating fries. We drove along the Sevier River and even stopped a few times just to look at the river and take a few photos. We also made a quick pit stop at the Piute Reservoir which was beautiful and windy.
Our final day at Zion was pretty fun. I had a bout of nausea which put a slight damper on things, but overall we were glad to be there instead of the Grand Canyon. We didn’t do much hiking (at this point we’d hiked over 17 miles), instead we took leisurely walk and ate more take-out. It was a nice way to relax after several activity-packed days and before heading home.
We absolutely loved our time in Utah and we plan on making another trip back soon. While we covered a lot of miles and sceneries, we felt like there is so much more that we didn’t see. Keith was also enjoying the rivers and streams, and I know he’d love to go back for a fishing trip. Definitely a trip to remember!
