Utah Road Trip 2025

Since Oscar got his free pass to national parks last year (a major perk of being in the fourth grade), we have been taking advantage of how close we now live to several of those parks. We decided to wrap up the summer after fourth grade with a fairly epic road trip that would take us to one more Colorado park, all five of the Utah parks, and a few bonus stops along the way.

We originally planned this trip around a race Jeremy was going to run in Beaver, Utah. Unfortunately, he hurt his knee skiing a few months back, so we had to scrap the race, but that opened up a few days in our itinerary. One of the beautiful things about living in this part of the country is that there is no shortage of amazing stuff to see; of course, the flip side of that is having to narrow down which ones you'll actually make it to on a given trip. We decided to add Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon, though we had to change those plans a bit when the North Rim of the Grand Canyon (where we'd planned to go) was closed down by a wildfire. Then another wildfire closed down the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, which was supposed to be the last stop of the trip (and is now the only Colorado national park we haven't gotten to visit). During the trip, yet another wildfire shut down power at a Capitol Reef, and we drove kind of close to it en route to that park.

It was a joy to find that, despite all of the major cuts that have been made by the federal government, the national parks we visited were still being cared for by dedicated (and totally overworked) rangers. The parks were clean; the stations were staffed; the restrooms were operational. I'm so frightened of what could happen to these parks during this administration, so worried that Oscar won't get to come back to see them as an adult and will instead have to tell stories about how, when he was a kid, the US had these things called "national parks." I was constantly battling the impulse to just take pictures of every. single. thing, just in case. The threats to these spaces are just one small horror amid so many, but these parks offer so much beauty and room for reflection, conservation, and awe. Losing them would be devastating.

We also got to make some other, non-park-related stops: the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City, where we saw The Importance of Being Earnest (one of my favorites); Salt Lake City, where we visited the capitol building and checked out a weird (indoor, air-conditioned) attraction called Dreamwalk; and the extremely-dark-at-night Gunnison, where we went to the observatory to see a talk about astronomy and look through some powerful telescopes.

Our first stops were Durango and Mesa Verde. Jeremy and I had been to Durango before, so we had a sense of what to expect there, but we found a new fun thing to visit with Oscar: the Pinkerton Hot Springs, which are literally right on the side of the road and look kind of like a giant cinnamon roll. We didn't get into the little pool that collects the water, but it was still a fun little stop.

The next morning, we made our way to Mesa Verde, which has incredibly well-preserved cliff dwellings. The boys took a tour down to see what is called the Cliff Palace, and we all enjoyed the views throughout the park, including the Sleeping Ute. From there, we drove to the Four Corners, took exactly three pictures, and ate snow cones.

After spending the night in tiny Bluff, Utah, we drove on to Monument Valley. This is such an incredible– and enormous– place. The glimpses you get from the highway do not prepare you for what you find when you actually enter the park. (We were also not prepared to find dozens of people literally standing on the highway to take pictures in the spot featured in Forest Gump.) I have recently been editing a project that talks extensively about films made in Monument Valley, so I was especially excited to make it to John Ford Point, but that ended up being one of the less memorable spots– which is saying quite a lot.

Our next stop was Lake Powell, booked when we thought we would be able to make it to the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately, the fire that shut down the North Rim was still burning, and it made Lake Powell extremely smoky. We did make it out to the Glen Dam, but otherwise we didn't do much exploring.

Luckily, the smoke didn't follow us to our next stops– the Coral Pink Sand Dunes outside of Kanab, Utah, and Zion National Park, the busiest stop on our trip. The sand dunes made for a lovely short stop; the color doesn't look as vivid in pictures as it does in person. Oscar got very lucky when a family who had rented a sand sled let him borrow it for a slide down the hill.

From there we drove on to Zion, knowing that we wouldn't try to tackle the entire park. You can only access most of the land by getting on shuttles at the visitor's center or in one of the nearby towns, which we knew wouldn't be a great fit for us. So instead we used the east entrance, which involves a one-mile tunnel through a mountain that opens into some gorgeous views. We spotted some young bighorn sheep doing their impressive walking-on-impossibly-steep-surfaces thing, but the main attraction here is how close you are to these incredibly tall rock formations.

The other nice thing about Zion is that it's right next to a little restaurant Jeremy found several years ago called Oscar's Cafe. We left the park and found a parking spot at Oscar's (usually not such an easy feat) for a really delicious late lunch.

After Zion, we drove on to Brian Head, which we made our home base for a couple of days. Months ago, I got us tickets for the Utah Shakespeare Festival's staging of The Importance of Being Earnest, which I have read dozens of times but never seen performed. (I have of course seen the movie, because Colin Firth.) We all loved this show– it was high energy, beautifully designed, and very, very funny. If you ever have a chance to get to Cedar City for a USF show, I highly recommend it.

The next morning we made our way to Bryce Canyon. We didn't get there early enough to witness sunrise from Sunrise Point, but the light was gorgeous nonetheless. Whereas Zion has all the rocks up close and personal, Bryce is more about the vistas– just views for days and days. (I want to shout out the visitor's guide for this park, which was supremely helpful and offered a lot of really useful advice.)

We left Bryce for Salt Lake City, stopping along the way to grab some ice cream at the Creamery in Beaver. (Shockingly, we encountered not a single dirty joke about that combination of place name and business name.) SLC itself was . . . fine? Trafficky? We did enjoy getting to see the capitol building; the temple (just a few streets away) was covered with scaffolding, so we skipped it.

As we drove into town, we happened across a billboard advertising something called Dreamwalk, so after perusing the website, we decided to spend the afternoon there– "there" being inside a mall in Orem, a suburb of SLC– and it was a lot of fun. Basically, it's a blacklight scavenger hunt involving a complicated story about a lava-like substance, fairies and other fantastical creatures, and a planet of fun-loving robots. We really enjoyed it, especially because it was air-conditioned and gave us a break from the 100+ degree temps.

Next up was Capitol Reef, which I'd never heard of before last year. This is likely because it's in the middle of nowhere– but not that far from a place called Monroe Canyon, which is currently on fire. As a result, all of the power had been shut down to the entire region. I'm not sure how much that contributed to the park's general emptiness; we saw very few people and almost no wildlife. It was almost eerily quiet.

The stretch of road from there to Moab was among the most desolate we've ever been on, which probably compounded the eeriness of the whole experience.

Moab is close to two of the "Mighty Five" Utah parks. We decided to do Canyonlands first, and because we did not do much research, we were surprised to find out that this park is actually divided into three different sections. We only did the Island in the Sky section this time, but we loved it so much that we immediately decided that we will go back to see the Needles section the next time we're in Moab.

Canyonlands is completely breathtaking. We also lucked out and got a cool, cloudy morning, which both made it really pleasant for wandering around and gave us some gorgeous cloud shadows. The boys climbed one rock called the Whale, but the main attraction here (unsurprisingly) was the view of the canyons.

And for our last park, we went to Arches, which Jeremy and I had visited and fallen in love with last year. This was one of our busier stops, so it came in handy that we already had a sense of what we wanted to do and the order to do it in. We hiked up to the Windows and through some more pink sand to see the smaller Sand Dune arch. It was really amazing to compare how the park looks in the morning to how it looked when we went in the late afternoon on our last trip.

I was also really glad to be able to do a lot more walking this time through. Last year, I was dealing with a lot of pain from a torn meniscus in my left knee and arthritis in both knees. Since then, I started seeing a personal trainer to strengthen all the muscles in my legs, and it made a huge difference. I still can't handle really steep downhills, which limited my options for exploring (I didn't make it up to the upper Delicate Arch viewpoint, which I would have loved to do), but it was so nice to have some of that mobility back and to be able to see such a difference from last year.

From there, we drove on to our last stop in Gunnison, Colorado. We had hoped to be able to make it to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, since they reopened the North Rim at the end of July, but we decided it was better to wait for a later trip. We did get to go to the Gunnison Valley Observatory for a really interesting talk on the Prime Meridian and Greenwich Standard Time (reading this, I'm aware that it could sound like I'm being sarcastic, but I'm not– it really was interesting!) and to look at the stars through some powerful telescopes. Even without the telescopes, it was dark enough to see way more stars than we're used to; we could even see the Milky Way, though the moon was so bright that it made it harder to spot.

Other highlights of the trip:

• In keeping with our tradition of having too much ice cream on vacation, we got everything from pizza parlor sundaes to artisan ice cream to a rolled-ice-cream taco to gelato.
• Utah is apparently really fond of dirty soda. (I love the energy, but I don't love the name.) Over the course of this trip, we tried butterbeer (root beer, cream soda, and cream); two versions of a root-beer-and-marshmallow combo; a lime rickey (Sprite, grape syrup, and fresh lime juice); a Tootsie Roll (root beer, chocolate syrup, vanilla, and cream); and a cherry limeade.
• We enjoyed picnics in a couple of really beautiful spots, the kind of places that make your PBJ taste better than it does at home.
• We heard so many different languages being spoken at every park we visited. It was incredible.
• No sunburns! I invested in a few sun shirts and put on sunscreen constantly, and it worked. I can't remember the last time I made it through a vacation without at least a little bit of a sunburn. I even got one in Scotland. So this is a major accomplishment.
• Over the course of the trip, we saw a baby bear (Mesa Verde); lots of deer, chipmunks, and lizards; several blue birds that we couldn't identify; and two cows hanging out on the side of the road (Dixie National Forest, one of the few places on this trip that didn't have frequent "Watch for Cows on Road" signs). We also saw a "Marmot X-ing" sign in Capitol Reef, but sadly, no marmots.
• One of my parents' favorite travel stories from my childhood involved our trip to Vicksburg, where my mother helpfully pointed out various things while I made seemingly contemplative noises from the back seat. About halfway through the drive, my dad glanced in the rearview mirror to see that I was stretched out with my feet on the window and my head in a book and hadn't seen a single thing my mom had mentioned. (My little sister was asleep in the middle seat the whole time.) Oscar offered his interpretation of this travel experience by burying his face in a book whenever he got bored between stops, no matter how enthusiastically Jeremy and I were expounding about the beauty around us.