Travel to Utah Advice :)

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For our milestone anniversary next fall, we are thinking we might travel to Utah, perhaps Moab. But we have never been and I am looking for general advice — where do we stay, etc, which of the parks makes the most sense…I think we may try to fly, and stay about a week.

We are not much for crowds, have pretty significant food issues (so restaurants are not our thing) and DH walks long distances with a cane but we are otherwise mobile. We will probably travel in late September? Not sure about that part. He loves astronomy, photography; I am happy most anyplace new to me and we like museums too. TIA for your good ideas

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That’s a great time to go. Too dang hot in the summer.

We went early Oct 2020, stayed in an old motel on the far edge of Moab … main priority at the time was outdoor entrance for Covid cautions. We stayed 4 nights. Went to Arches 3x - it’s a fairly small park, but it’s nice to see at different times. Went twice to Canyon Lands and the nearby Utah state park (Deadhorse).

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There are lots of places to stay. We were in Moab in February and stayed at Hyatt Place which was a new hotel. We went to Arches this trip, but in the past have done Canyonlands and Dead Horse State Park. You could drive to parking lots at all of these parks and walk from there to see the sights. Are you looking for a place to stay where you can do your own cooking?

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September is great time to go, Summers are blisteringly hot. I would recommend waiting until after Labor Day and kids are back to in school and college classes have resumed to thin out the tourist hordes.

There are tons of very nice Air BNB rentals in Moab. (D2 has a friend who is a doctor there and she can’t afford to buy a house! The real estate market in Moab is insane.) Those will get you a kitchen to cook in and access to washer and dryer.

(You will probably want the washer and dryer because the red dust gets on everything!)

Entry to Arches National Park requires a prior reservation between April 1 and October 31. Your entry is for a set time on a particular date and has a 1 hour window for use. Tickets for September will go on sale June 1 so you’ll want to make your reservations as soon as know what date you’ll be going. You will need to make a Recreation.gov account to purchase your tickets.

I highly recommend signing up for the tour of the Fiery Furnace while you’re visiting Arches.

The hike to Delicate Arch can be strenuous and the trail is pretty heavily used, especially near sunset because everyone wants to see the arch with the setting sun in the background. The hike is hotter at the end of the day because the sandstone has heated all day in the sun and radiates the heat back at you. Hiking in the morning is cooler.

There are 3 sections of Canyonlands National Park–

  1. Island in the Sky which is on a plateau above the Colorado and Green Rivers, There is a famous jeep trail that circles the plateau, the White Rim Trail. (D2 and SIL mountain biked the whole 100 miles of last weekend.) Spectacular views, but it does require a high clearance vehicle w/ 4 wheel drive. Island is north-west of Moab and past Dead Horse Park.
  2. Needles is south of Moab and you;'ll pass the turn off for it if you access Moab via Rte 191. Needles is probably the most accessible for 3 sections of Canyonland. You can do an “out and back”, stopping at the visitor center to go out and do some day hiking. There are several sand stone arches as well petroglyphs and early puebloan ruins in the park, but getting to them will require either hiking or having a high clearance car + walking.
  3. The Maze is on the west side of the Green River and is the least accessible section of the Canyonlands. It has minimal roads and all of them absolutely require a high clearance vehicle with 4 wheel drive. Stunning scenery, though.

No section of Canyonlands requires reservations unless you plan to stay overnight.

If you want to get into the backcountry, but don’t want to drive your car or don’t want to rent a high clearance 4 wheel drive car, there are lots of 4 wheel tours you can take. There’s also white water rafting on the Green River.

There are lots of arches outside of the Arches National Park, but getting to them will require some hiking to get to. But check first, the BLM has been closing some trail to help prevent erosion of the landscape and to protect wildlife from people doing stupid things.

EDIT to add–if you can spend the night or any part of it in the backcountry of either Island or Needles. you can actually see the Milky Way. The only time I’ve seen it have been either in Canyonlands or Yellowstone/Grand Tetons. When Halley’s Comet last made its pass by earth, we took the kids and went with a bunch of friend way, way out to the backcountry of Needles District, past Elephant Hill. You could see Halley’s with just your eyes. It was pretty special. We were out there for 3 nights with telescopes.

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Oooh I just went with my daughter to Moab
Fabulous - loved canyon lands and dead horse state park
Arches was ‘fine’ but I don’t ever need to go back to that one
The other 2 were fab and tons of hikes around Moab outside the parks
We stayed in a place called field station Moab
You do need times entry tickets to arches be 7am-4pm (5pm later in summer) but it’s open 24/7 so you can enter and not pay early am or later afternoon

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There really aren’t much in the way of museums in Moab. But if you’re willing do some driving, Blanding, UT which is directly south on Rte 191 (75 miles, or 1.3 hours), there’s 2 museums.

Edge of the Cedars State Park Museum has a huge collection of Archaic Native American (Anasazi) pottery.

There’s The Dinosaur Museum which is nice, but pretty basic and has several locally collected dinosaur fossil skeletons.

(Years and years ago during rained out trip to Needles with 2 restless youngsters, we drove down to Blanding to see the museums. Otherwise Blanding doesn’t have much else to recommend it. D2 was in Blanding 4 years ago to do a month-long a clinical rotation in rural medicine…She said it hasn’t changed much in the intervening decades.)

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I think we may try to fly

Moab has a teeny, tiny airport that served by 2 small regional airlines. One that connects only to Salt Lake City and another that connects only to Phoenix. Flying into Moab may be hard to arrange.

Grand Junction, CO is the nearest reasonable size–though still small – airport. It’s served by United (flights from Denver) , Allegiant (flights from Las Vegas or LA) and American (flights from Phoenix or Dallas). Grand Junction is about a 2 hour drive from Moab.

Salt Lake City is the nearest large airport and is about 4 hour drive away.

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I assumed that flying would mean driving a few hours, but that is also fine with us. And yes, to whoever asked, we would want at least a basic kitchen setup. Museums are nice but not a requirement, btw. Wehave been to Yellowstone and GTNP and I expected some reservation requirements so that is good to know (and why we are starting pretty early)

If we fly into SLC, are there places to that make sense other than Moab? I hate to be guided by tourism departments alone –

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Following. H just mentioned that he might be going to SLC in Nov. I could tag along and visit the national park(s) over the weekend?

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What kinds of things are you interested in?

In SLC there’s plenty to do, but on the drive between SLC and Moab (via Rtes 6 and 191) there’s not much except a few small towns.

The other National Parks (Zion, Bryce Canyon, Capital Reef) and National Monuments (Grand Staircase-Escalante, Bears Ears, Cedar Breaks, Natural Bridges, Hovenweep, Monument Valley, etc) aren’t on your route from SLC to Moab.

Hovenweep is a little more than 2 hours south of Moab (and south of Blanding) via Rte 191. It’s a collection of Archaic Puebloan (Anasazi) structures. While not as compact of a site as Mesa Verde or Chaco Canyon, it’s still definitely worth seeing. There are 700+ ruins, including several large structures, spread out along a valley. The monument has been improved since I was last there. The road has been paved and there’s now a Vistors Center.

Closer to Moab, but still a drive (about an hour) is Newspaper Rock State Park. Newspaper Rock is a tall rock wall covered in petroglyphs. It’s one of the largest, if not the largest collection of petroglyphs in a single location in the US.

Edited to add:

Utahraptor State Park is about 30 minutes north of Moab on Rte 191. It might make a nice stop of your travel from SLC. This park was only authorized by the state legislature in 2021 so I don’t know how much infrastructure has been built. But it’s a scenic area with fossils beds where Utahraptors and other dinosaur bones have been found.

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@arisamp

The National Parks are not all that close to SLC. Most are a 4-6 hour drive from SLC. IOW, not a day trip.

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We did a big 16 day trip when the kids were little. My favorite of the Utah National parks is Zion. It’s pretty popular but they manage the flow of people well with the shuttle etc.

I liked Arches too.

Also highly recommend Bryce. It is probably the most well known for stargazing although they are all good. Bryce just has special events around it. We flew into SLC and drive straight down to Bryce. It was about 4 hours. Made for a long travel day but then we were there in the morning.

We also included the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons in our trip. So I think if you wanted to include Bryce and Zion it’s doable in a week or 9 days.

Visiting the Utah parks plus Grand Canyon is called The Grand Circle. Do a search on Grand Circle Utah and I’m sure you’ll get lots of hits.

We liked Newspaper Rock and the museum in Blandings. We did a brief stop at Canyonlands and Dead Horse State Park too. Didn’t have time to explore much. I enjoyed the other big three parks more.

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Canyonlands is best seen either by foot (hiking), mountain bike or a high clearance 4 wheel drive vehicle.

If you have access to high clearance 4 wheel drive vehicle, you might try the Shafer Trail. This unimproved jeep road starts from Island in the Sky and drops 1500+ feet down the side of the plateau via a series of sharp switchbacks. Absolutely spectacular views!

Driving it requires confident 4 wheel drive experience since the road isn’t wide enough to accommodate 2 cars so one will have to back uphill to the nearest switchback in order to let another vehicle pass. The start of the trail is a steep drop where you can’t see the road from the driver’s seat. When Dh and I drove it. I got out of the car and walked down the first 30 feet or so just to reassure myself the road was actually there.

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We took a driving trip to Utah (from Los Angeles) a couple of years ago in September and visited the national parks we hadn’t been to before–Capitol Reef, Arches and Canyonlands. Our favorite of those three was actually Capitol Reef although we liked them all. Depending on how long you have, you would be able to see all of those. You could fly to SLC, then drive to Moab (about 4 hrs), and spend a few days there seeing both Arches and Canyonlands. Then you could drive to Torrey, the small town near Capitol Reef (about 2.5 hrs) and spend a couple of days there. Then drive back to SLC (3.5 hrs). Between Torrey and Moab we took a detour to visit Goblin Valley State Park, which added extra time, but was worth it. We stayed in a condo outside of Moab, and a large cabin in Torrey. It was a wonderful trip!

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i’ve read a lot of good things about Capital Reef, so we are thinking that might be a good place to be based. I can’t see us doing the Great Circle even though I can see that would be epic.

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I think all the Utah parks are wonderful. You are sure to have a good time wherever go and probably want to go back another time for more.

Zion was definitely my favorite park. The others are so stark and unforgiving, especially in the summer. Zion has the Virgin River and trees!

If you do Moab you might want to raft the river there at Fisher Towers. I haven’t done it but have heard it’s great.

BTW it’s the “Grand Circle” like “Grand Canyon” — just clarifying if you want to search on it.

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Ooops! Grand definitely makes more sense than Great, ty for the correction

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Capitol Reef is very scenic, but it’s absolutely in the middle of nowhere. Fruita is the location of the campground and Park HQ. (It’s also where the NPS housing is located.) Fruita is a lovely ghost town, filled with abandoned (and sometime not so abandoned) orchards. But there is no lodging or dining available there.

Torrey is the town closest to the park’s entrance. Lodging options are limited so make reservations early. D said there are several hotels in Torrey now. She and her crew from residency did 3 day climb & explore trip to Capitol Reef a couple of years ago and stayed in a pretty nice one with a hot tub. But during tourist season, hotels do fill up and there’s not much nearby except for those tourist hotels by the Park’s entrance. (Torrey has a whopping permanent population of 257, BTW.) If you head east on Rte 24 from Torrey, you’ll reach Hanksville (48 miles/1 hour driving time). It’s about the same size as Torrey but is at the junction of Rte 24 and Rte 95. Rte 95 runs north-south. North takes you to I-70, south takes you to Hite, Fry Canyon and Blanding.

If you want to visit both Arches/Canyonlands/Moab as well as Capitol Reef, Hanksville might be a better base location.

Hite is at the northernmost end of Glen Canyon National Recreation area/Lake Powell. Hite used to be one of the major marinas on Lake Powell, but it’s been closed due to low water levels for a few years now. Very sad.

If you don’t mind doing some extra driving, UT Rte 12 is a National Scenic Byway. It goes from Panguitch to Torrey. (Panguitch is directly south of SLC. Take I-15 south from SLC to I-70. Go east I-70 and exit onto Highway 89. Take 89 south to just south of Panguitch to pick up UT Rte 12.) UT 12 winds through lots of red rock and gives you great scenic overlooks of Bryce Canyon before looping north to Torrey. It also takes you thru Escalante and Boulder–which are hopping off points to get into Grand Staircase/Escalante National Monument.

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So, the planned trip to Utah is almost here. @greenbutton - did you go? Any feedback?

We will fly into SLC and drive down to Moab. Plan to visit Arches National park one day (no reservations needed!) and Canyonlands another.

Has anyone here done the sunrise hike at Mesa Arch? if yes, how’s the drive to canyonlands from Moab in the dark? Another possibility for us is the Delicate Arch hike at sunset but I am a bit nervous about hiking down in the dark.

Also thinking of booking a sunset jeep/hummer tour so would love to hear recommendations or experiences if folks have done this.

Thanks!

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In early Oct 2021 ww did the Delicate Arch hike early morning, starting when it was a little dark. My husband wanted to do sunset, but I was uninterested in that plan. We would have been hiking up in hotter weather, drinking a lot of water, waiting for sunset. No restrooms. Then hiking down in the dark. I was glad I rejected that plan because there is a lot of uneven smoothish “slick rock”… much better done with daylight.

Fun tidbit - once up there, we saw lots of people including a wedding group.

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Speaking of restrooms - I was really happy in Zion NP recently when we did a 3 mile hike up to by Angel’s Landing, and they had them up there. I was in MOAB in the late 90s, and don’t remember any restrooms during long hikes.

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