Road Trip Recap – Arizona, Utah & Colorado

As I’m writing this, Mike is getting the van packed up for our next trip. We’ve been at my mom’s place in Marana, Arizona for the past 3 weeks since our last trip waiting on our license plates and registration to be delivered so we are antsy to hit the road again. We finally got them yesterday so we are hitting the road today!

But, before we do that, I wanted to recap our last road trip. We did nine National Parks in 18 days and saw some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world. We explored Arizona, Utah and Colorado, caught up with old friends, camped on Forest Service Roads, on the side of a road in a state park, and in campgrounds, and hiked so much we got tired of hiking toward the end the trip. Here are some of the highlights, and fair warning, it’s a long post.

Sedona, Arizona

Wow, this place was amazing! Neither of us knew what to expect and it blew us away to the point that we actually ended up staying a night longer than we were planning. That is the beauty of van life – we get to make our own schedule! We camped at the same spot on a Forest Service Road just outside of town each of the three nights with a beautiful view of the red rocks.

We hiked Devil’s Bridge Trail (and did not wait in the one-hour line for the Instagram picture on the bridge, but mainly because I was too scared to walk out across it) and Airport Mesa Trail. We went to a cute brewery downtown and met up with one of Mike’s friends, Paul, who agreed to an impromptu campout with us at our camp spot that night. The next day was pouring down rain so we stayed inside the van and watched movies all day. It was so cozy and just what we needed after a night hanging out with Paul. 😊

Grand Canyon National Park

They don’t call it “grand” for nothing. The first view of the Grand Canyon takes your breath away. As I alluded to above, I’m terrified of heights so watching people walk to the edge of the canyon where there are no railings gave me anxiety all day. However, that didn’t stop us from going into the canyon the next day via the South Kaibab Trail. This was also anxiety inducing but the views and the experience were well worth it. It had snowed two days prior and was getting into freezing temperatures every night, so the beginning of the trail was covered in ice. It doesn’t get much direct sunlight until later in the year so there wasn’t hope of it melting before we got there. If you’ve never seen it, the trail starts with a series of steep switchbacks and we had to sit on our butts and slide down the ice on one of the switchbacks because there were no other options. Slightly terrifying but a great memory! We made it down to the Cedar Ridge point and the hike back up was much better.

Bryce Canyon National Park

We left our side-of-the-road camp spot in Utah early in the morning with the hopes of getting a first-come, first-serve camp site at the Bryce National Park campground and we were successful! That may have been because the overnight lows while we were there were around 12 degrees, but either way, we got a campsite in the park.

Bryce Canyon is beautiful – the vibrant oranges, peaches, yellows and reds – and the views are different everywhere you turn. We hiked the Navajo Loop to Queen’s Garden one day and the Navajo Loop to the Peek-a-Boo Loop trail the next day. Many of the trails were closed due to the freezing weather but we loved those hikes. We actually ended up doing the Navajo Loop a third time as well. One morning, we woke up early enough to drive over to the Rim Trail to see the sunrise over Bryce Canyon. It was so cold that morning that any exposed skin became painful, but we saw the sunrise and got our photos and then went back to bed.

 

Zion National Park

We had a campsite reserved for certain dates at Zion, which is why we did Zion and Bryce “backwards” but that only meant that we backtracked about 90 minutes. Zion is amazing as soon as you drive into it. The road is paved in red, the rocks are massive and then you drive through a long tunnel that has view points throughout with glimpses of the magnificent landscape. We got there early that day to do the Narrows hike, which is the river hike. We rented all of the gear – water shoes, neoprene socks, waterproof bibs and a hiking stick – and then checked in for our shuttle time to take us out to the trailhead. Fortunately for us, we had talked to a park ranger at Bryce Canyon the day before who had alerted us to the new shuttle system at Zion. You cannot drive into the upper canyon anymore and you cannot get a shuttle ticket the day of, you have to log on right at 5pm the night before to buy your $1 shuttle ticket before they sell out for the next day (or buy them at least 14 days in advance). We got lucky and got tickets but others were not so lucky and you could see them making the 8 mile trek to the trailhead in all of their Narrows gear.

Anyway, the hike was so much fun! You trek through the river to get into the slot canyons and it’s such a cool experience because when do you ever get the chance to ford a river? I felt like I was on the Oregon Trail. It’s an out and back hike so you can go however far you want and we went about 3.5 miles in so 7 miles roundtrip. Even though it was 80+ degrees outside, it got really cold in sections where the sun was shaded by the rocks so we were happy to have all of our waterproof gear on.

The next day, we decided not to try to get shuttle tickets and rented bikes instead. I hadn’t ridden a bike in years and I forgot how fun it is. We had the best time riding around the trails and up the canyon in the sun. We went up to the Zion Lodge and did the Emerald Pools hike from there, which was about a 3-mile roundtrip. That afternoon we took the bikes into town to decide where to go for dinner and stopped for some iced tea on the way back. I was sad to have to turn the bikes in.

Our campsite was walking distance to the town so we could walk to dinner and the brewery that were right there as well as walk to the showers at the rental shop. We will shower in the van when there are no other options, but we’ll default to a public shower if they’re clean and available.

Moab

From Zion we drove through Capitol Reef and did a quick hike but then kept on going to Moab. We stayed with my childhood friend’s parents for 3 nights and they absolutely spoiled us. We stayed in their detached apartment with a beautiful view of Wilson Arch and they took us exploring and fed us and we just had the best time.

Moab was a really cool town and I think Mike especially would like to spend more time there since it’s a big mountain biking place. We drove through Canyonlands and Arches National Parks but didn’t hike in either of them since we had done a lot of National Park-ing by then. We spent a day offroading through Onion Creek with Jan and Ken and that was really cool. Turns out there’s a lot to see in Moab besides the National Parks.

 

Mesa Verde National Park

The next stop was Mesa Verde National Park in Cortez, Colorado. We had low expectations for this park and almost skipped it but it turned out to be one of my favorites. It was created to preserve the Ancestral Puebloan sites from over 700 years ago. We listened to an audio tour as we drove around and looked at the different stops on the tour and it was so cool. You could see the dwellings that the Pueblo people had built into the sides of the cliffs and their pit houses that they would build into the ground. It was amazing to imagine what life must have been like and how they could accomplish such architectural feats.

Petrified Forest National Park

This was another park that we weren’t so sure about but then turned out to be mind boggling. This park is remnants of a forest from the Triassic period, 225 million years ago, which is hard to get your mind around. There is also a section of the park that encompasses the Painted Desert. It was definitely a worthwhile stop on our way from Colorado to Tucson.

On our way back from the Petrified Forest to Tucson, we camped at a lovely campground on a lake in Showlow, Arizona and then made the couple hour trip back to my mom’s place in time to watch the Sunday of the Masters and meet my sister and her family here for a week.