Seeing our National Parks

flying to Vegas

Last month we did some domestic traveling. We flew into Las Vegas to meet up with our daughter before heading out on a national parks adventure. Lots of discussion and planning among the three of us took place before we decided that we could visit six of the national parks, primarily in Utah, within our twelve day timetable.

We picked up a rental car and spent the night in Vegas. As none of us are particularly fans of the area, I selected a hotel on the north side of town to give us a head start on our three hour drive to Washington, Utah. Here we spent two nights so that we could visit Zion National Park. 

We hiked the park the first day. It is quite beautiful, but it was incredibly packed with tourists. We did not expect the crowds considering that it was mid-September.

Zion National Park

We drove though the park the next day. They do not warn you that once you do the drive and exit the park, you will be in no man's land with limited cell service. We considered turning around, but the line to reenter the park at this back entrance was easily a couple of miles long. And there was only one attendant at the gate. We ended up about two hours away from our hotel, which was only a 20 minute drive to the main park entrance. We made lemonade out of lemons, however, and found an interesting cave to visit as well as a cool spot to go for a hike.

Kanab, Utah

The next park on our itinerary was Bryce Canyon, which was a couple of hours away from our previous hotel. We did some wonderful hiking in this park. The landscape is very unique from other parks we have been to visit.

Bryce Canyon

The next morning we went back into Bryce to see the sunrise. It was worth getting up early to experience it. We did a small hike before going back to our lodge to pack up for the next leg of the trip. I'll cover Moab in the next post.

sunrise at Bryce