Southern Utah: Wow

If you've never driven around Southern Utah in the summertime, plan a road trip and go. Go to your local AAA and grab the Southern Utah map, and then meander around roads like UT-12 and UT-128 for some of the most unexpectedly breathtaking parts of the country.

We entered Utah on the highway from Vegas, got off about 10 miles in, and drove across the state on one-lane roads that wound through cliffs, mesas, and 100-mile expanses of beautiful nothing. All in all we hit five national parks in Utah, plus countless National Forests, Preserves, and Monuments that alternate every 50 miles or so.

Four highlights:

Bryce Canyon National Park
We arrived at Bryce at 11pm after an exhausting day that started in Vegas and included a five-hour detour to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. We put up our tent in our pre-reserved campsite, and awoke at about 9:30 for a couple hours around the park. We walked for about two hours near the rim and then below Sunrise Point, admiring the hoodoos and vistas. A hoodoo, if you didn't know, looks like a big, fat stalagmite made out of rock jutting up from the ground. They're apparently made from erosion resulting from the daily freezing and thawing of moisture, and were thought to represent bad luck (it's not a coincidence that it sounds like "voodoo"). The real highlight of the park is the view from Bryce Point, where you look over a vast field of hoodoos in all directions.

Utah State Route 12
To get to Moab and Arches, our next stop, Google will tell you to head west to the interstate, although we decided to take the more direct route off-highway. Utah 12 is an absolutely amazing road. The first hour or so winds down Bryce Canyon into the valley with stunning views, and we thought we'd seen it all by the time we had lunch at a cafe in Escalante. A middle-aged British couple were the only other patrons at the cafe, and they were pale from the last sixty miles of their journey which apparently took them two hours. We got back in the car ready for a battle, and although I wouldn't call the experience harrowing, the views from the top of some of the mesas were incredible, with 100-mile visibility and literally no civilization to speak of whatsoever.

Arches National Park
I really wish we had had more time here. Okay, maybe not, because I would have died of dehydration and heat exhaustion. Arches is a vast expanse of red, with giant rocks that have gradually eroded to create dozens of huge arches that I'm sure you're imagining. Some of them are visible from the road, but the best ones require a few hours of hiking to get right next to. We saw the Delicate Arch--the most famous one--from across a canyon, rather than taking the 3-hour hike to see it up close. Also, this is a park worth going to soon, as one of the arches fell down earlier this year.

Utah State Route 128
To get from Arches back to I-70 most people take US-191, a four-lane highway west of the park, although if instead you are heading east it is more direct to take UT-128, which borders the park for the first bit and then follows the Colorado River before flattening out into the plateaus where the interstate lies. We camped out on the side of this road, just on the banks of the Colorado. The other side of the river is a huge cliff--undoubtedly created by the river over time--which is the border to Arches Park. Truly one of the most beautiful places I could have imagined spending the night, we couldn't resist driving along to see the rest of what the road had to offer.