The Utah Big 5 and Grand Canyon
Zion National Park
For Spring Break this year, we did a trip that had been on our bucket list for quite a while: the Utah National Parks. We fell in love with Utah years ago when our kids were both born there and it continued to grow with several snowboard trips since. There is so much to see in Utah that we chose to do it separate from the summer roadtrip. And while we were so close, we added the Grand Canyon on. We will be breaking down each of the stops, but wanted to give the overview of what we did and how.
Itinerary
We flew into and out of Salt Lake City and rented an SUV with Rugged Rentals. Josh always handles the car rental and did a lot of research to choose them. Everything was easy and smooth. We rented a large Nissan Armada that could comfortably pack us in and had 4wd.
Day 1 Travel + Mill Canyon Dinosaur Trail
Day 2 Arches
Day 3 Canyonlands + Dead Horse
Day 4 Monument Valley
Day 5 Antelope Canyon + Horseshoe Bend
Day 6 Grand Canyon
Day 7 Springdale
Day 8 Zion
Day 9 Kanarra Falls + Bryce Canyon
Day 10 Scenic Byway 12 and Capitol Reef
Day 11 Travel back to SLC
Overall I think our plan worked out great. For some I’m sure it would have been too busy or rushed. We like to constantly move and don’t ever want to be bored. We could have switched the order of Grand Canyon and Antelope Canyon to save a slight bit of time. However, it ended up raining on Day 6 and we wouldn’t have gotten the awesome weather we needed for Antelope. So it all worked out.
We were also pretty “parked-out” by the end of the trip. We didn’t give Capitol Reef the energy it deserved. The idea of another 10-mile hiking day was enough to make me cry. There are also some awesome slot canyon hikes down Hole in the Rock Road that we would have loved to explore.
Park Preferences
We didn’t fully agree on the order of the parks, but we had a general consensus. We know these are some of the best in the country, so it’s all relative.
1. Zion
2. Arches
3. Bryce
4. Grand Canyon
5. Capitol Reef
6. Canyonlands
The key for us seemed to be actively experiencing the parks up close. The ones higher on our list tended to let us be active, have a variety of areas to explore and offered opportunities to have more intimate experiences without hordes of people around us.
Favorite Activities of the Trip
You can read about each of these in our more detailed posts. We thought it would be fun to compare notes the last night of the trip. It is pretty cool to see that each of us enjoyed different parts.
Holden
1. Petroglyphs (Sand Island)
2. Lower Antelope Canyon Tour (Antelope)
Rory
1. Double O-Arch Hike (Arches)
2. Delicate Arch Hike (Arches)
Josh
1. Canyon X Tour (Antelope)
2. Angel’s Landing Hike (Zion)
Jenny
1. Delicate Arch Hike (Arches)
2. Kanarra Creek Hike (Outside Zion)