Utah's Big 5, Plus 2

When last we blogged, we were leaving Page, Arizona. On May 16th (our son Tory's 31st birthday, incidentally) we drove to the small town of Mount Carmel, Utah, about two hours northwest of Page. That was our home base to begin exploring Utah's National Parks. There are five, and they are all in the southern half of the state. We visited each of the five over the next couple of weeks, plus a couple of great Utah state parks.

First up, Zion National Park, which is the 3rd most popular national park in the US (ahead of both Yellowstone and Yosemite), and we were with the crowds to prove it. Fortunately, Zion has taken some proactive measures to mitigate all this love (e.g., requiring use of a shuttle in the most popular areas of the park). We visited on two different days and did some hiking as well. If you have not visited Zion, it has huge canyon walls like Yosemite, except in red.

The West got a lot of snow this past winter, so the Virgin River (which carved Zion Canyon) was running high, and there were also waterfalls and small cascades in different sections of the park. Some of the popular hikes in Zion were still closed due to either high water or trail damage, ie rock slide due to the freezing and expansion of water in cracks in the rock.

The next Utah NP we visited was Bryce Canyon. We were last there 27 years ago when Jeannette was 6 months pregnant with our son Mace. The park is not big, but has this wonderful amphitheater filled with colorful "hoodoo" rock spires. We hiked both along the rim and beneath the rim.

We hiked down to the Queen's Garden area, so-named because one of the hoodoos resembles a status of Queen Victoria. The various rock formations give the park an other-worldly vibe.

Before moving on from Mount Carmel, we visited Coral Pink Sands State Park, with high sand dunes (which looked more orange than pink to us) that are popular with the dune buggy crowd on less windy and rainy & snowy days than the one we were there. The dunes are also popular among snow boarders that take to the dunes when the snow slopes close for the season.

We relocated about 100 miles north to Richfield, Utah, and spent the next day visiting Capitol Reef National Park. Although much less visited than the others, it still has amazing vistas and colorful rock cliffs, as well as arches, slot canyons, and petroglyphs.

Next we moved to Moab, Utah, a haven for rock hounds, off-roaders, and other outdoor types. It was Memorial Day weekend, and the town was overrun with visitors. However, we were still able to get out to some amazing spots. Our neighbor Kim flew out to Utah and brought her nephew and his fiancée down from Salt Lake City to join us for the weekend.

Moab is the gateway to two national parks. The most famous is Arches National Park, which we were able to visit on two separate half-days.

We also spent an entire day on a four-wheel drive tour of the "Needle District" of Canyonlands National Park, which lies southeast of Moab. This was not just a casual four-wheel drive tour, but something between a bucking bronco and a roller coaster. There were several narrow, winding, boulder strewn sections that had to be negotiated in reverse! The scenery was spectacular. On the drive there, we stopped by Newspaper Rock, a major petroglyph site. As part of our day, we hiked up to a viewpoint of the Needles area.

We also visited another great park in the Moab area - Dead Horse Point State Park. It's a mesa that overlooks the entire area, including a private potash retrieval operation. We hiked along the rim of the mesa and were treated to some spectacular views of the valley and the Colorado river snaking through the valley floor.

We left the Moab area on Tuesday, May 29, and headed toward Las Vegas for our flight back east. Since we would be putting the Ciaowagen into storage, we set-aside a couple of days to clean up the RV and store stuff away. However, we did have some time for fun, including a visit to Nevada's Valley of Fire State Park, which has technicolor rocks, 4,000 year old petroglyphs, and beehive-shaped rocks.

And, since it's Vegas, we also took in a show (Cirque du Soleil's "KA") and the fountains at the Bellagio.

We flew home to Virginia for the first three weeks of June for doctor's appointments, a family reunion, and catching up with our friends and neighbors. Then it'll be back out to Vegas to get the Ciaowagen and head north and west through California and up to the Pacific Northwest.