The Utah Parks Part I: Bryce Canyon to Canyonlands
OK, so I know I am getting ahead of myself and that I still need to do a blog post about all of the amazing places we went in the “diagonal” part of our trip. Buuuut, you guys, I really want to write about the national parks because, wow👏 it is one thing America does so well. We started our national parks circuit in the south west-ish part of Utah, did a clockwise loop, dipped back into Arizona, went past where we started, took a left turn, crossed through Nevada, and ended in Yosemite. Here is the full list of the parks we visited in order:
Bryce Canyon, UT
Capital Reef, UT
Arches, UT
Canyonlands, UT
Monument Valley, Navajo Nation, AZ
Antelope Canyon, AZ
Grand Canyon North Rim, AZ
Zion, UT
Yosemite, CA
We were primarily interested in hiking, and these parks did not disappoint. We did our best hiking in Zion, Arches, and Yosemite. I hear that if we had been on the south rim of the Grand Canyon we would have had some great hiking opportunities as well. If all you want is the opportunity to take some stunning photographs, you can’t go wrong with Arches or Antelope Canyon. If you don’t have as much time as we did, I would suggest skipping Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Antelope Canyon, and/or Monument Valley. Nothing against these parks, they are gorgeous, but the others offer more bang for your, er, time, I guess.
To find most of our trails, we used the alltrails website. If you use the website (even on a mobile phone) instead of the app, you can search trails and read people’s reviews without needing an account. After finding the trail we wanted to do, we would download an offline map of the area on our phones as a precaution against getting lost. GPS on your phone will work in most parks even when you don’t have cellular service.
Bryce Canyon National Park
View of Bryce Canyon
To visit Bryce Canyon, we stayed in the very cute town of Kanab. In the (late) morning, we begin our tour of the national parks by hiking the Navajo Loop and Queen’s Canyon trail. It was a fairly easy hike, although if you hike counterclockwise, like we did, the first part is a series of moderately steep switchbacks. It was a nice day 1 hike for us. We were both wearing new hiking shoes that needed to be broken in without breaking our feet, not to mention how unprepared we were for hiking (and outdoor life in general) after 7 years in New York. It was pretty, but very crowded. The redness of the rocks was still new to us, as was the extreme heat of the mid-summer Utah desert. Later we got very good at getting to the trailhead early enough to beat the heat, but it was a gradual process. After our hike also drove the length of the park (it’s not that big) and snapped some photos from some of the many scenic vistas. Then we drove northeast to spend the night in a wagon in Torrey in order to visit…
Descent to start the Navajo Loop Trail
Capital Reef National Park
This is the park where we did out first legitimate hike. We did the Cassidy Arch trail and while it is not a very long hike, it took us up 702 feet in the afternoon heat. As hinted at previously, when hiking in Utah in the middle of summer, it is advisable to start as early in the day as possible. Nicolas suggested rising early but I was not convinced. Well I certainly learned my lesson after this trail. It was well over 110 degrees and we could feel it. Despite the temperature, it was a really fun hike, which started inside a small canyon and then took us gradually up to the naturally occurring Cassidy Arch, which has the added bonus of looking scary when seen from the side but not when on top of it. We picked up the pace on the hike down since storm clouds appeared to be looming and this is an area subject to flash floods. It made me nervous but turned out to be a false alarm.
Cassidy Arch
Fremont Petroglyphs of animal and human figures
We then strolled the petroglyphs trail,we4 which is an easy walk along the cliffside. From it you can see animal and human figures carved into the rock by the Native American Fremont culture which lived in the area between 600 to 1300 AD.
We drove down to Moab, UT where we would spend the next 3 days in order to visit both Arches and Canyonlands.
Canyonlands National Park
Shadows fill the canyon in Canyonlands
Technically we visited Arches next but since that was one of my favorite stops on the trip, I’m going to give it its own post. Canyonlands was nice but not one of my favorites. We only did one short early evening hike here, the Grand Viewpoint Trail. It was a very pretty and mostly flat hike with the payoff of wonderful canyon views at the end, especially if you are willing to climb up a few boulders at the end of the trail. Nicolas was convinced that Canyonlands was going to spoil the Grand Canyon for me, since he described the view as a mini Grand Canyon. To be clear, there was nothing mini about this canyon. Maybe it did spoil it a little, but it is hard to be unimpressed by any of these wonderful parks. I really enjoyed watching the shadows gradually fill the canyon as the sun was setting. This was one of the quietest trails we took and that alone made it worth the visit.
