Canyonlands National Park

September 2, 2013

Canyonlands was the surprise find on our adventure. It's SO pretty, but with all the big Canyons nearby - Bryce & the Grand Canyon specifically, this park gets totally overlooked. My regret is not being here either early in the morning, or later in the afternoon near sunset to watch all the canyons pop full of their color and capture photos. The rocks even in midday while we were there had a purple hue to them, which makes them rather interesting and unique. This park is the result of the Green & Colorado Rivers working their magic carving canyons over time.

This website: The Mighty 5 helped me so much with trip planning, distances, what to do, where to go, and timing which was so important for us. The page I have directly linked to, shows how to do all of Utah's 5 National Parks in a week! Amazing!

Important Note: Water! Same issue as with Arches, plan ahead, you can't find it in the park here either!

Surprises: We didn't realize there were two sides to this park that are entirely separate. We went into the North side, which is the Island in the Sky side. Great name! (Does that name make anyone else think of the Zelda games? H & I had a good discussion about that, but I digress). The way in to the other side is down near Needles. The convenience with the Island in the Sky side is that it's only about 30-40 miles from Arches, whereas you'd have to go over 70 mi to get to the other entrance... the other interesting surprise were the amount of bike trails that we could see wrapping around down in the canyons. If you love your bike, this is the place for you. I was also surprised at how much sand is at the top of the canyons. H of course from his college days, will tell you all about sandstone and such, and since he knows rock types well from his sculpting classes, he wasn't at all surprised.

 These first few shots are what you see when you walk across the street from the Island in the Sky Visitor Center. We came right after a tour bus was leaving, so we had the place all to ourselves.

 Buck Canyon Overlook

 Grand View Point Overlook

A final thought: we all love our handy dandy technology goodies, but trying to get a GPS from here to Salt Lake took over two hours. We were halfway to Provo before that signal finally came through. I'm so glad we went to AAA and got a couple of regular maps. H is great, he does all the driving and trusts me to navigate us wherever we need to get to. I love maps! My dad taught me to love them at a young age. It was that or him having to endure the 2 questions every parent hates on a long car ride, "Are we there yet"? or "How much longer"? Yep! I was that kid! In fact, I got my maps with my dad after work one day the week before we left. Thanks dad!

Arches National Park

September 2, 2013

If you are planning to go to Arches, a good plan is to stay in Moab. It is only about 4 miles from the park, and you can have all the conveniences you need right there. If you are staying in the park there are campsites, they all seemed to be full and very busy, though it was Labor Day weekend, so crowds were to be anticipated.

Arches is a good park to drive through, unless you really want to get close to a bunch of the arches that seem to be clustered deep in the back of the park together and you are going to have to hike it. While we were here, it was at least 95 degrees out. H & I were sporting some mighty spectacular farmers tans by the end of our time here. Ahh the secrets of our charms revealed!

Important note: if you are going to come here, bring a lot of water!!!!! You can fill up for free outside at the Visitors Center right by the entrance, but other than that you are on your own. There is no water anywhere! We carefully shared our two water bottles to make them last, and refilled the moment we came back down to the Visitors Center, but the moment we left the park we headed right to a gas station to buy a gallon of water.

 Park Avenue Trail

 Balanced Rock

 The Garden of Eden

 The Windows

 Salt Valley

 Delicate Arch

 Skyline Arch

National Park Trip

We took an 8 day trip to visit National Parks. We had a goal to visit 5, but we realized Capitol Reef was nowhere near anything or anyone that we wanted to visit, so it got cut... to be visited later. As it turned out, we really missed our friends and family, so we wound up doing 4 parks in 5 days. It was awesome and only required 3-4 hour drives max a day. Not bad, not bad.

If you are good with locations this is where we went, flew into Salt Lake, drove to Vernal, down to Moab (saw Arches & Canyonlands), back to Salt Lake, went up to Jackson Hole, WY, went to Grand Tetons & Yellowstone, stayed in West Yellowstone, MT (seriously love that little town, a place I need to revisit one day), down to Rigby, ID and back to Salt Lake and flew home. It makes a figure 8.

To all our family and friends that saw us, let us stay, let us hang out, had us meet your families, let me do photo shoots with your family, took us in as your own, and took us to the state fair, we love you and appreciate you. Those are some of our favorite memories. Thank you. (No one ever reads this blog, so I can say ALL sorts of nice things and they'll never even know!)  :D

Crossing through the middle of Utah we found the trees already starting to change colors! Something I've always wanted to see!

Zion National Park

August 2, 2013

We found about 3 extra hours, and since we wanted to visit Zion this summer anyway, we snuck it into our trip now.

Thoughts on the park: if you have the time and can come in off I-89 do it! Take the time to wind across the park, the beauty of the red rock is intense and the rock face changes enough that it always stays interesting. There are also hieroglyphics if you are looking closely enough that will catch your eye.

If you have no time, bounce in off I-15, park in the Visitors Center and hop on the shuttle, ride up and down to each of the stops and learn a brief overview of the park, there is a recording that plays as the shuttle rolls along to all the stops giving you the history of the park the Mormon settlers and the stories associated with all of the stops if you have time get off and roam around, if not keep going.

We made it to the Weeping Rock stop - two from the top before we had to turn back. It was quick, interesting and informative.

 Weeping Rock above.

Grand Canyon - North Rim (Day 2)

August 2, 2013 - Sunrise

Do you ever fear that you're going to over sleep and miss something awesome so you keep waking yourself up? Well, yeah, welcome to my life.. 2:30am, 3:30am, 4:15am, 4:45am... I gave up by 4:45 and just got up... sunrise was scheduled for about 5:30am. The Lodge is right by Bright Angel Point, it's probably a good half mile down, but while we were exploring the area yesterday, we found a nice point clear of trees with a large flat boulder where we decided we would head off to in the morning for the sunrise pictures. We were out the door just after 5 tripod in tow! Until about 5:25am we had only crossed one or two other people, so we got to enjoy the fullest extent of the sunrise by ourselves. So beautiful! At that point, I felt like it was over, then suddenly everyone starts stumbling down the path in their pajamas, crying children or infants still dead asleep on their shoulders to catch the sunrise. Admittedly, H & I were entertained at the site. He ran further down the trail for more shots and I moved over to a bench under a tree to let people climb on the rock for photos.

By 6:15am we were in eating breakfast and got to enjoy the great view from the restaurant's dining room. We also took a couple pictures of the Lodge itself.

 

 

We came, we saw, we accomplished everything we wanted to do. Since we were ready to go so early in the morning, we decided to throw in another adventure.. Zion National Park. We were heading up I-89 towards Salt Lake City anyway, so we decided to get on the road and sneak in another park!