beutahful
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Hiking Angels Landing – Zion National Park, Utah
With so many popular NPS sites transitioning to lottery systems due to extremely high demand for permits, I’ve decided to adopt a new strategy: enter every lottery every year until I eventually get them all. Given my past success with NPS lotteries – or, rather, my complete and total lack of success – I entered… Continue reading
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Hiking The Subway – Zion National Park, Utah
For reasons I’m not entirely clear on, when I first planned our Zion trip I didn’t think to enter the permit lottery for this hike. Then a couple months later, I was messaging with a friend and mentioned this trip, and she asked if we’d gotten Subway permits. Unfortunately, by this time the main lottery… Continue reading
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Hiking to Kolob Arch – Zion National Park, Utah
“I’m pretty sure I already know the answer to this, but how do you feel about hiking 14 miles in one day?” I asked my husband as I was assembling our Zion itinerary. Predictably, he wasn’t enthused. To be honest, I don’t love hiking 14 miles (22.5 km) in one day either. It’s something I’ve… Continue reading
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A comprehensive guide to visiting Zion National Park
When I started planning our late-May trip to Zion National Park this past January, I was already far too late. This was entirely my own fault. I’d put in for an Angels Landing permit and decided to hold off on booking anything until we found out because, quite frankly, if we couldn’t hike Angels Landing,… Continue reading
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A photo a day: desert southwest edition
Two years ago, shortly after we returned from Glacier National Park, I put together a post sharing one photo from each day of the trip. I ended up writing many additional posts detailing our time in the park, but in the meantime, that post gave me the chance to share some of my favorite images… Continue reading
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Hiking to Druid Arch – Canyonlands National Park, Utah
A few years back, we visited The Needles district of Canyonlands National Park for the first time. Unfortunately, with just one day there, we were forced to make a choice: hike all the shorter trails or hike one 11+ mile (17.7 km) trail. We opted for the former as it would allow us to see… Continue reading
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Hiking Devils Garden Loop – Arches National Park, Utah
One really nice thing about Arches National Park is that many of the arches are easily accessible. A couple can be seen from the road, and a handful of others can be reached via a short, relatively flat and easy walk. But way up in the northernmost reaches of the park is a trail to… Continue reading
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A comprehensive guide to Arches National Park
When I was a kid, there were a couple girls in my school whose families would head to Moab, Utah every single year for spring break. I never really understood the allure of returning to the same place over and over again when there are so many other things to see, but in retrospect that… Continue reading
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Hiking in Moab – Corona, Bowtie, and Pinto Arches
We weren’t able to get the full week of Thanksgiving off work this past year, so instead of our typical weeklong trip, we stayed closer to home, opting for a four-day weekend in Utah. We’ve been to Moab before – multiple times, in fact – but despite those previous visits, there were still three hikes… Continue reading
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Squeezing our way through Little Wild Horse Canyon
After seven wonderful days exploring the red rock desert of Utah, our trip was coming to an end. We would be spending the night at a hotel in Green River, setting us up for an early morning start for our drive back home. But before checking in for our final night away from home, we… Continue reading
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Goblins and goblettes – Goblin Valley State Park, Utah
We pulled into the mostly empty parking lot around 8:30am and stepped out into the chilly November air to take in the view. On the way to the overlook, we stopped to read a sign. “Like nowhere else,” it read. I looked up at the bizarre landscape in front of me. Back down at the… Continue reading
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The Waterpocket Fold – Capitol Reef National Park, Utah (part II)
As I mentioned briefly last week, Capitol Reef gets the ‘reef’ part of its name from the fact that, from a distance, the towering line of colorful cliffs appears to be an impenetrable barrier. This 100-mile (160 km) long wrinkle in the Earth’s crust is called the Waterpocket Fold. Sometime between 50-70 million years ago,… Continue reading
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Orchards, cliffs, and petroglyphs – Capitol Reef National Park, Utah (part I)
Capitol Reef National Park is the least visited and most underrated of Utah’s “mighty five.” And I sort of understand why. It’s not as archey as Arches or as canyoney as Canyonlands. It doesn’t have Bryce’s hoodoos or Zion’s Angel’s Landing. But you know what? Capitol Reef is a really cool place that is absolutely… Continue reading
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A waterfall in the desert – Escalante National Monument, Utah
Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is a hidden gem. Spanning two million acres of mostly undeveloped wilderness, this national monument preserves a vast expanse of red rock desert in southern Utah. The monument is part of the Grand Staircase… an enormous span of rock layers that represent nearly two billion years of geologic history. These layers… Continue reading
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Land of the sleeping rainbow – Escalante Petrified Forest State Park, Utah
After two wonderful days of hoodoos, we departed Bryce Canyon and began the 90 minute drive to our hotel in the small town of Escalante. I’d planned some extra time for the drive knowing that we’d be following Highway 12, which is a scenic byway. We would also be driving past three state parks, though… Continue reading
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Among the hoodoos – Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah (part II)
Despite its name, Bryce Canyon is not a canyon. It’s a sequence of amphitheaters located on the edge of the Paunsaugunt Plateau. This name was given to the plateau by the Southern Paiute people, who lived in and around Bryce Canyon for hundreds of years. The word hoodoo is also derived from the Southern Paiute… Continue reading
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“It’s a helluva place to lose a cow” – Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah (part I)
Thank you to Ken Burns’ The National Parks: America’s Best Idea documentary series for this gem of a quote. If you haven’t watched this series, I highly recommend it. We really enjoyed it! The quote is attributed to Ebenezer Bryce, a Mormon pioneer who homesteaded near Bryce Canyon in the 1860s and began taking visitors… Continue reading