day 7: Bryce Canyon, Zion and Grand Canyon National Parks

We started the day off by driving to Bryce Canyon National Park.

What a gorgeous place!  We loved this stop and were so glad we added it to our trip at the last minute.  We were kind of mad that we didn't have more time for hikes because they looked incredible (see the trail in the picture above?).

lone tree growing down in a canyon

We were able to do a short hike down into a canyon and back up and out.  That was really awesome and we were happy we squeezed it in!

We really want to come back and spend more time in Bryce.  There was more vegetation here than we've seen in the other Utah parks.  Bryce was really clean and well maintained.

We would highly recommend Bryce to friends who hike and to those who would rather just drive and take pictures.  :)

John at Bryce, doesn't it look like that canyon is painted?

After Bryce we drove to Zion National Park.  What an incredible place!!  The sandstone mountains were enormous and so amazing.

 We were awestruck driving into the park.  I keep saying every place we go is amazing but Zion was truly breathtaking.

It's obvious that it is one of the most popular national parks as there were a ton of people there.  The parking lot at the visitor's center was easily 8-10 times bigger than any we'd been to in the last couple of days.  The visitor's center had a huge gift shop.  At Zion you take a shuttle that drops you off at 10 different destinations throughout the park where you can go on various hikes and/or take pictures.

The Three Patriarchs

One of my favorite things we saw was the Weeping Rock, which is basically a huge boulder that has water coming out of it.  You can stand in a naturally carved out part and the boulder is like an overhang with a tiny waterfall coming down.  The water mixed with the view of the mountains and vegetation was beautiful.

standing inside the carved out section of Weeping Rock

All of the sights were gorgeous and we were again a little upset that we didn't have more time to hike and explore.  God's beauty really is abounding at Zion and all of the other parks we visited.  I am so thankful that I've been able to see all of these sights.

one last picture of Zion

After Zion, we started driving towards the Grand Canyon, we planned on camping there and seeing it in the morning. Once we began our drive, we noticed the signs said we were much closer to the Grand Canyon than our GPS led us to believe.  So we drove quick, quick, quick to make it there before sunset.  When we arrived we grabbed the camera and all but ran to the viewpoint.  Talk about breathtaking!!

(the picture can't even begin to capture how massive it was)

I literally had to catch my breath when I saw it.  And then I teared up some at the sheer grandeur of it.  I kept thinking "God is amazing, thank you Lord that I am able to see this".  It is something everyone should see in their lifetime if they're able to.  And all of the people working there were so nice.  We stuck around taking pictures until we were the only two left on the overlook.

We walked around, bought some souvenirs and went back to look at the stars.  Stars on such a clear night with that vast of a landscape...AMAZING!  The Grand Canyon was absolutely incredible, we were in awe the entire time we were there.

After we wrapped everything up at the Grand Canyon we drove to a couple of campsites before we found one with vacancy.  Once we found one, we set up camp and passed out.  Oh!  One more thing, while driving to the Grand Canyon we passed a lot of huge meadows and saw tons of deer.  We were both shocked that there were so many large groups of them out in the open. They were beautiful.

see all of them?

Then we saw bison!  A huge group of bison!  And they were right next to the road so John stopped and I took pictures, they walked a little closer and I got a little scared because they showed no fear.  Pretty cool to see them so close though.

day 6: more Moab (Canyonlands National Park)

We woke up, cleaned up our campsite and drove to buy a few souvenirs in Moab.  We got breakfast at McDonald's (mmm) and drove to Canyonlands National Park.

some canyons in Canyonlands

We discovered that Canyonlands is separated into three parts (Island in the Sky, Needles and Maze districts) by a huge canyon (go figure) so we would have to drive to one part, go all the way out of the park and drive around 60 miles or so and enter the park from another direction to see one of the other parts.

First we went to Island in the Sky, went to many overlooks and did some little hikes.  They were such beautiful canyons!  This was all scenery I've never seen in real life, really amazing!  My feet were tingly at a lot of the parts because of the heights. 

We realized there are a ton of Europeans who come here, rent an RV and travel to various national parks which is pretty cool.  The people around us were about 50/50 Americans and Europeans.

Once we finished at Island in the Sky we made the long drive to The Needles, another part of Canyonlands.  When we arrived at The Needles we noticed it was considerably hotter and had no where near the breeze as Island.  This we probably due to it being around 2-3 p.m. and the lower elevation.  We also noticed there was no where near the "traffic" at Needles like there was at Island.  We soon found out why.  While there were still some really cool views they were no where near the incredible views at Island.  

 the Green River

We still did some of the hikes since all of them together were about 4 miles.  

We opted out of the last hike (2.4 miles) because we had reached our day's end and were pretty tired.  Plus, we had a decent drive ahead of us (4.5 hours to Bryce Canyon National Park).

me resting on a rock

The coolest hike at Needles was one where you got to see some old cowboy camping spots.  It was neat to see things like a chair, mattress (just the springs were left) and table just left behind in the same spot they'd been in years and years ago.  

Once we left Needles we went back through Moab and decided to treat ourselves to a pizza before heading to Bryce Canyon.  Halfway through our drive to Bryce we decided to get a hotel close to where we were instead of driving all the way to Bryce and staying there.  We decided on the small town of Richfield, UT.  Our GPS directed us to a residential neighborhood and after driving around we finally asked someone standing in their front yard (at 12:30 a.m.) where Apple Tree Inn was.  They gave us directions and we finally made it there!  We turned in for the night after showers and clean clothes (it had been 3 days since I last showered and 2.5 for John).

Notes about the Utah National Parks we visited: Super windy, except for Needles.  Mostly rock/stone mountains and a lot of sand.  It was really dusty, the dust was constantly in our noses and mouths.  Definitely the desert.  It was beautiful but we agreed we couldn't live in that kind of climate permanently.  The temperatures were nice, mid 70s-80s.  We were very happy we chose this part to be the first leg of the trip as it is probably unbearable come mid-July.

day 5: driving and Moab, Utah

We woke up and kept driving through New Mexico which was beautiful and definitely the desert.  It is so different from the landscapes we're used to.

New Mexico

Once we reached Moab, Utah (4.5 hours later) we found a Wendy's and ate lunch, then drove to Arches National Park and began hiking.  We began hiking Devil's Garden, which a friend (Jessie) recommended to us, it was a good trail.  We took a primitive trail which really means the trail is really poorly marked.  It was very confusing at one point and we kept running into dead ends, which was extremely frustrating.  We retraced our steps and began the trail from another point.  It had really incredible views!

 That's John out there on that ledge, about gave me a heart attack.

 

 an arch

I couldn't get over how different the trails were from the ones we would hike in the mountains out east.  You're basically hiking up huge stone (boulder) mountains and the trails are just sand.  My mouth was extremely dry with sand and dust.  I had a little trouble catching my breath what with the elevation change and all (over a mile high).  But the views were really awesome and I was quite proud of some of the things I hiked.

Double Arch

Once we were finished with Devil's Garden (4+ hours later) we drove to Delicate Arch, which Jessie recommended we hike right before sunset. We booked it up the trail (1.5 miles completely uphill) so we could get good pictures of the sunset.  I kept wondering when the heck we were going to get there because it felt like it was taking so long for a short hike plus I'm sure I was tired from the previous 10 miles of fast paced hiking earlier. 

We got to Delicate Arch and it was beautiful!

Delicate Arch at sunset

It's truly incredible that things like this exist and that they are natural formations. We took some pictures, rested a bit and decided to walk back before it got dark.  We were pretty tired by the end of the day (9 pm).  We drove to an ice cream shop (also recommended by Jessie) and each got a huge waffle cone of ice cream.  I didn't even feel a little guilty about the calories :).  

We decided to stay at a campground as opposed to a hotel so we could practice setting up our tent and cooking dinner on our camp stove.  It was about 10 pm by that time and a little harder to do it all in the dark but we did it!  We were exhausted and went to sleep after everything was clean.