Wilson Arch outside Moab, Utah

Continued from
Driving the American West: Monument Valley to Canyonlands

From the Needles section of Canyonlands, I stumbled across Hole ‘N the Rock, a ragtag collection of kitsch that forms the ultimate roadside attraction. It’s places like this that make you realize that a road trip is utterly unlike other kinds of travel…and that’s a wonderful thing.

I then eased on into a two-night stay in Moab, Utah, a few friendly blocks’ worth of a river walk, pueblo architecture, and darn fine brewpub or three. At my favorite, the Moab Brewery, I was seated beside two long tables of teens in shiny formal wear, celebrating before their high school’s Sadie Hawkins Dance.

And I treated myself to a glorious half a day at Arches National Park, a relatively small swath of dazzling erosion.

*Sigh.*

I miss Utah.

In the outer reaches of Moab, Hole N" The Rock is a kooky roadside attraction with art made from junk, a petting zoo, a souvenir shop, a motel, and a tour-able family dwelling built into this here rock

The work of metal sculptor Lyle Nicholls is all over the lot at Hole N" the Rock, including this replica of Mater from the animated movie "Cars'

Moab's shops are full of Western art, souvenirs and clothing

I loved my stay at the cozy, remodeled Ramada; and to think, I chose it at random when the Best Western across the street was full

This was the view of the La Sal Mountains from just outside my second-floor room at the Ramada Inn

Eddie McStiff's is a Moab institution, a lively pizza pub tucked into the back of a Western-style mini mall

At the Moab Brewery, I was really taken with this locally-made Utah wine; nearby, the Castle Creek Winery itself offers tastings of all its wines

A popular stop with park-goers, the Love Muffin Cafe has great espresso drinks and baked goods, including gluten-free pumpkin-chocolate chip muffins

Moab's Mill Creek Parkway at dusk; taking a walk along here is a lovely way to start or end a day here

The entrance to Arches National Park, four miles from Moab

Arches offers more than arches

The La Sal Mountain Range rims the park, creating a stark contrast with the dry, sandstone landscape

The unique sandstone formations here are the product of erosion over approximately eleventy gabillion years

One of the many, um, arches, in Arches

Sometimes the park looks like a mysterious badland, strewn with castle ruins

Striping the terrain are bands of iron-rich, non-oxidized sandstone that have turned green

The non-oxidized rock is one of the most unusual shades of green I've ever seen

The hills around Arches are also full of milky quartz

The small park takes only about two hours to explore by car, but is full of amazing, surprising shapes

RESOURCES

City of Moab, Utah
Hole N” the Rock
Ramada Inn Moab 
Eddie McStiff’s
Moab Brewery
Castle Creek Winery
Love Muffin Cafe
National Park Service website for Arches National Park

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Soon continued in

Driving the American West: Western Colorado

Travels With Two

Utah's Monument Valley

Continued from
Driving the American West: Mojave Desert to the Grand Canyon

 
Days three to five of my Great Big American West Road Trip? Simply awesome.

I cruised from the Arizona high desert into Utah’s Monument Valley, a rocky, orange landscape that looked a heck of a lot like the Pixar movie Cars. Probably because it was the inspiration for the Pixar movie Cars.

I spent the night in a quiet, riverside motel on a lonely stretch of highway in Mexican Hat, a town named for a huge rock shaped like a sombrero.

After a couple of gravelly switchbacks beside towering sandstone mesas, I headed into the Needles section of Canyonlands National Park to find snow, ponds, rabbits, mountain bluebirds and enormous rocks shaped like everything from arrowheads to tiramisu.

Then I wandered my way through Canyonland’s Island in the Sky, a winding expanse of craters that rival the Grand Canyon, rimmed by the snow-capped La Sal Mountains.

I feel like my eyes have been popping out of my head for a week now…

Just before the Utah state line, a Burger King in Kayenta, AZ hosts the World War II Navajo Code Talkers Display

The display features artifacts, documents, and photos that detail the important Navajo presence in the war

The river view from The San Juan Inn, my home for a night in Mexican Hat, UT

Mexican Hat, the town's namesake, looks like a sombrero

The Garden of the Gods switchback in the Monument Valley

Taking switchbacks in the Monument Valley allow a closer look at sandstone formations like these, in the Garden of the Gods

A winding road down the center of the Needles section of Canyonlands

The La Sal Range seen from a high point in Needles, Canyonlands

They don't call it Needles for nothin'

...though many of the rocks here look more like tiramisu, if you ask me

Hawk perched on a rock in Canyonlands

A wintry pond in Needles, where I saw rabbits and ducks

In early March, some parts of Canyonlands were peppered with snow, while others were very dry and windy

Gnarled tree in the Island of the Sky area

When you see signs in Canyonlands that say "Open Range," believe them

Little furry goats in Island of the Sky wander close to the road, so drive carefully

Some sections of the Island in the Sky reminded me of the mythical kingdom of Mordor from The Lord of the Rings

Buck Canyon in the Island of the Sky is, for my money (an entrance fee of $10), just as grand as the Grand Canyon

RESOURCES

Monument Valley
Burger King Navajo Code Talker’s Display
San Juan Inn in Mexican Hat, Utah
National Park Service website for Canyonlands National Park

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Continued in

Driving the American West: Moab to Arches

Travels With Two

Call it a test of my own gumption or a simple thirst for adventure:

I’m hopping in my car and hitting the road to explore the American West!

In an effort to banish writer’s block, stir up my routine and physically reconnect with my passion for travel, I’m uncharacteristically striking out on my own to visit:

• The South Rim of the Grand Canyon in northwestern Arizona
• Monument Valley, Arches and Canyonlands in southeastern Utah
• Glenwood Springs, Basalt, Carbondale and more in western Colorado
• Yellowstone National Park Jackson Hole and the historic town of Cody in northern Wyoming
• The Thousand Springs Scenic Byway and Boise in southern Idaho
• Bend and Crater Lake Portland in northwestern Oregon
• The west coast of Oregon
• Lassen Volcanic National Park in northern California

Travels With Two

Rock towers at Utah's Capitol Reef National Park

As some of you may have noticed (hey, we’re all busy), it’s the start of October 2011. Ten years ago this week I was off having a grand time with my mom and dad, exploring a remarkable swath of southern Utah.

Looking back on that trip, I’m still amazed at the endurance of love, family — and the Earth itself.

In the month following the shocking misery of September 11th, 2001, I flew out from Los Angeles to meet my parents in Salt Lake City. Adam wasn’t able to take time away from work, so this was my first flight alone since airplanes had been violently smashed across the Eastern seaboard. I was worried for my folks, who had to travel cross-country from Maryland, and uncharacteristically worried for myself; I felt enormous relief upon sweeping over the city’s surrounding salt flats, landing intact and at last, embracing my mom and dad.

Moments after we’d taken a deep breath together, though, we were surprised to find machine gun-toting Green Berets guarding Salt Lake City International Airport. It hadn’t occurred to us that Middle Eastern terrorists might target America’s center of the Mormon faith, and we suddenly felt we’d traveled much farther from home than a few scant hours in the air could possibly take us.

We’d soon find other surprises in Salt Lake City — Eisenhower-era fashions, bars in what we’d thought was a fully dry town, and amidst soaring snow-capped mountains, a small and thriving Afghan community. However, nothing was more exciting than the attractions we’d really come to see: Bryce, Zion and Capitol Reef National Parks.

My parents and me at Zion National Park, October 2001

This 5-day trip had been my mom’s brilliant idea, and she invited me along as a present for my 31st birthday. Eager to sit back and experience rather than navigate, she booked a private van and driver to take us across the state and around the parks. I feel it would be just as fun to rent a car and do this yourselves, but the presence of Alison, our young driver, did provide us with a welcome, unexpected coincidence — she and I shared the same birthday.

In addition to that small-world moment, this trip afforded a series of firsts: it was my first visit to Utah; my first-ever trip alone with my parents; my first time away from Adam on my birthday since we’d met in 1994; and my first time traveling with a digital camera, since Adam had just gifted me with one a few days before.  (The only thing in this list that I’ve since done again is travel with a digital camera…allowing me to illustrate this here site.)

Heading south from Salt Lake City to the parks, we’d pass huge mountainsides carved with high school emblems, explore dusty piles of rocks that hid long-abandoned petroglyphs, and beside dry creek-beds and willow trees, find the former homesteads of Mormon pioneers. There were roadside cows roaming free, whole hillsides of autumn-yellow aspens shivering in the breeze and long expanses of sheer rock snaked with bright green trees wherever a river ran, well, through it.

At Bryce Canyon, my folks and I were deeply wowed by the almost comically endless vistas, the trippy hoodoo spires and pastel gradients of red-pink-peach-brown-green-and-blue. At the rim of the yawning crater, Alison led me over to a pine tree, asked me to take a deep whiff of the sap, and smiled as I grew wide-eyed, amazed to find it smelled exactly like vanilla.

Bryce Canyon

We hauled way out past rocky gray moonscapes to Capitol Reef, which — quite possibly because of its proximity to very little else — we had entirely to ourselves. Climbing out of our van, we found ourselves standing firmly on what had once been the bottom of the ocean. From this vantage point, looking up at amphitheaters of stratified rock we marveled at big holes that had once housed ancient sea creatures…and felt the full and awesome weight of geological time. I tried to imagine this deep, narrow canyon filled with salt water, and suddenly understood (in a thirty-something sort of way) that just about everything that seems permanent is eventually replaced with something else.

Capitol Reef

Our last stop was Zion National Park, a bustling operation with its own eco-friendly bus system and scant opportunity to be alone. A stunning sprawl of slot canyons, mountain-edge views and sun-dappled creek paths, this park manages to attract a lot of tourists and yet still feel peaceful. Standing at the bottom of a narrow sandstone canyon next to a shallow trickle of the Zion River, one of my parents on either side of me, I felt that while a lot of things might change in our lives, we’d always have each other.

Zion National Park

Well, that was a decade ago. I’d love to return to Utah with my parents and Adam, maybe even see Arches and the Canyonlands this time around.

But this year, my dad has pancreatic cancer.

Next week he starts taking part in a special chemo study at NIH, a mere 20 minutes from my parents’ home in Maryland. Since I know my folks would much rather be heading out west on an adventure, though, I offer this post to them as a small consolation and a show of my (now 41 year-old) support. 

My hope is that someday we can all four go to Utah together. ‘Til then,  this amazing landscape seems more than willing to stand by stoically…and wait for us.

My parents, Ron and Suzan Wynne, near Capitol Reef in October 2001

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See also
TWT Travel Binders: Utah

Travels With Two

I long to take Adam to Salt Lake City and eat food from Afghanistan (there’s a large expat community there), stand on the Bonneville Salt Flats nearby, then go to Canyonlands and Arches National Parks in the southeast corner of the state.  

My parents took me to astounding Bryce, Zion, and Capitol Reef back in 2001,
and I’d love to show those to him as well.  

Oh, and along the way, visit the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab.

Here are some resources to help you plan your own “travels with two” to Utah.

Utah Guides
Utah State Tourism Guide
New York Times
National Geographic
Conde Nast Traveler
Frommers
Fodors
Globe Trekker: Colorado & Utah
Globe Trekker: Southwest USA

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Utah Articles
Sunset Magazine: Utah search results
Conde Nast Traveler: 10 Perfect Days in the American Southwest
Conde Nast Traveler: Whistle-Stop Tours
Travel + Leisure: American Beauty
Travel + Leisure: 10 Great Places to Spend Christmas: Park City
Travel Channel: Romantic Spa Vacations: Red Mountain Spa, Ivins, UT

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Utah Travel Agents & Tours
Touch the Southwest
Off the Beaten Path

Have a Utah tip, story, or blog post you’d like to share?

Travels With Two