Highway signs: Petroglyphs of Utah Hwy 279
July 28, 2023 On our national parks RV trip in May, we tried to decipher messages left long ago by native peoples along the Colorado River outside Moab, Utah. Today, Utah Highway 279 runs alongside these tablet-like sheer walls, with pull-outs where you can stop and look at the rock ...
Windows to the sky at Arches National Park
July 24, 2023 North Window Arch In early May, during our national-parks RV trip, we spent a day exploring Arches National Park in eastern Utah. The place is a wonderland of hole-punched, fin-like, and soaring rock formations, including more than 2,000 documented stone arches. Located near Moab, with its hotels, ...
Newspaper Rock petroglyphs: Mystery messages from the past
July 19, 2023 What’s black and white and red/read all over? Petroglyphs in the red-rock country of Utah! In early May, after leaving the Needles district of Canyonlands National Park, we stopped along Highway 211 to see Newspaper Rock, a state historic monument in southeastern Utah. A large, sloping rock ...
Hiking and off-roading at the Needles in Canyonlands
July 17, 2023 Canyonlands National Park spreads across 337,598 acres in southeastern Utah, divided into 3 districts by the Green and Colorado rivers: Island in the Sky, the Needles, and the Maze. In early May, after exploring popular Island in the Sky, we drove to the Needles on another day ...
Canyonlands: Purple canyons and cliff-clinging Shafer Trail
July 12, 2023 Terracotta sand and rock stubbled with green. Terraced buttes of mauve and lavender. Blue mountains with snowy, sawtoothed peaks. A vast sky and stomach-dropping abyss. Canyonlands National Park in southeastern Utah offers awe-inspiring western vistas, beauty, and adventure and was my favorite among the Utah parks we ...
Capitol Reef National Park petroglyphs, orchards, and pie
July 06, 2023 At Capitol Reef National Park in south-central Utah, ancient layers of stone stand exposed in a red-rock desert. Formed into turrets, reefs, and domes by geologic uplift and then the slow erosion of water over millennia, the park’s layered rock tells the history of the Earth to ...
Scenery for a million miles at Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument
July 02, 2023 Is 1.8 million acres big enough for you? That’s the size of sprawling Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah, one of our stops on our spring RV trip out west. Utah felt like one big park to us — it contains 5 national parks plus 8 ...
Springtime at Red Hills Desert Garden, part 2
June 29, 2023 I squeezed in a visit to St. George, Utah’s Red Hills Desert Garden during our big RV trip, and this is part 2 of my coverage. (Click here for part 1.) In late April, the waterwise public garden dazzled with colorful desert flowers, and I wandered for ...
Desert in bloom at Red Hills Desert Garden, part 1
June 27, 2023 Utah. Red rock desert. Cactus and yuccas. When we set out in April in a rented RV to visit national parks out west, I expected hundred-mile vistas, arches, and canyons. What I didn’t expect was a flowery, beautifully designed garden of desert-appropriate plants. But thanks to a ...
Hoodoo wonderland at Bryce Canyon National Park
June 25, 2023 On our spring RV trip through western national parks, we visited Bryce Canyon, a strange landscape of sculpted-pillar hoodoos. Located in southern Utah, Bryce sits high in the sky, averaging 8,000 feet in elevation. Snowbanks stood head high along some of the overlook paths during our late ...
Waterfalls, wildlife, and wonder at Zion National Park
June 21, 2023 Utah and its wealth of national parks drew us west on our 5-week RV trip this spring. Zion National Park in southwestern Utah sparkles as one of its crown jewels. For anyone wishing to beat the heat in canyon country, April is prime visiting season. We arrived ...