I don’t know what it was that caught my eye, but one dark rainy night last winter I saw something on a website somewhere and decided that a trip to Southwest Utah should be our spring warm up trip this year. So I started researching and settled on Zion and Bryce Canyon. I had no idea Utah was so scenic, and has five National Parks. I figured I could check off at least two more from the list on one trip this spring.

As is the case with booking a reservation in the National Parks, I figured out when we wanted to go and backed up six months and got ready to try and score a spot. The lesson was learned in previous years, and at precisely 7 am on a cold dark morning in November, I was at the keyboard with all the right filters set, waiting for a site to appear when I clicked the mouse. Except it didn’t, the message was “This is a very popular campground and nothing is available”. So I tried again Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday with the same results. Finally on Friday morning a site was available. I didn’t have time to care about what site it was, I just had to lock it in. I knew the query filters would give us a spot big enough, and that’s all that I could confirm before it was lost out of my cart and gone to someone else.

We were scheduling the stay at Zion the first week, then Bryce Canyon the second week. Bryce is much higher in elevation than Zion (turns out the bottom of Bryce is the top of Zion, and the bottom of Zion is the top of the Grand Canyon we learned), so we needed to leave Bryce for last so it would have more time to warm up before we arrived. But reservations for Bryce didn’t start until Memorial Day, so it was all first come in the park campsite. Because I wasn’t sure how that was going to work, I booked a week at a nearby Utah State park as a backup option.

Then one day about a month later I saw an ad for a concert in Las Vegas I wanted to see, and the show was at the last end of the Zion reservations, so I booked a spot in Vegas for the trailer and we planned a little detour to hear The Chicks sing.

Now we were venturing further than we ever had before, along a new route down to the southwest, so I found us Harvest Hosts to stay in for three nights down and three nights back.

This has been a long, unseasonably cold and miserably wet spring, and Rob & I have been working hard out in the rain every day trying to finish up the deck. We didn’t get done before it was time to leave for Zion, but made good progress and buttoned up the project for a three week break. Finally it was time to go, so we packed up the trailer, grabbed the kitties and scooted out of town.

Our first night’s stop was at the Kiona Winery in Benton City, WA (just west of the Tri Cities). We chose a new path across the mountains, and went down Highway 7 through Tacoma to White Pass (Highway 12). That took us across the mountains to a warm sunny Eastern Washington. Kiona makes superb wine, and we enjoyed a tasting on the deck and purchased a four pack at what sounded like a bargain price after sitting in the sun drinking a flight of delicious wine.

The rest of the trip south was uneventful, with the kitties sitting quietly in the back seat and quick overnight stops along the way. Friday afternoon we pulled into our spot at Zion and it was so beautiful. We had a huge spot inside the National Park with a gorgeous view of what we came to see – the beautiful red rocks of Southern Utah.

Zion was super fun because the park is closed to cars and everyone must either use a shuttle bus or bicycle to explore the valley. And of course we had our power bikes and spent the first day exploring. The next day was Sunday and we made the mistake of trying to get to a very popular hiking spot too late to find parking, and got caught outside the park looking for a hike to keep us busy until the throngs of weekend tourists made their way home.

The week was spent hiking and biking and exploring, including a fun ride outside of the park to a ghost town that was used in the old movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It was a beautiful ride through the Utah countryside.

After 5 days at Zion we headed south into Las Vegas for a concert. I had reservations at an RV park on the outskirts of town, planning to Uber in and out of the strip, and it worked out well. The park was a bit sketchy, but the laundry was clean and Uber worked perfectly. We went in and spent the afternoon on the Las Vegas strip, and managed to spend $1.00 in some random slot machine before the show. I should have tried a bit more gambling to try and make up for the cost of wine, which was between $17 and $25 for a glass. But the show was fabulous, and The Chicks brought it all for their first show in Vegas.

I had made plans for a Harvest Host between Vegas and Bryce for Thursday night, but realized that if we wanted first come camping, we were far better off getting there Thursday instead of Friday. So after a late show in Vegas we got up at 5 am and headed north to Bryce. Luckily we got there just after noon and scored a beautiful spot in the park campground.

Bryce, like Zion, is very bike friendly and we spent a lot of time pedaling in and outside the park. We walked and hiked and went on two rides out in the countryside, and took more pictures of red rocks than we’ll ever need. The scenery was as spectacular as we hoped for.

We met some fun folks from Vancouver who wanted to go star watching late one night, so we tagged along. We schlepped our camp chairs to an upper lookout (Bryce NP is at 9,000 feet) and sat in the cold desert night, amazed at the quantity of stars that showed up. It wasn’t quite like being in the South Pacific on a moonless night on the boat, but it was still beautiful and part of the adventure. And thanks to Rob for keeping me from literally walking off the edge of the canyon afterward (oops, forgot we made that turn into the lookout).

One day we took a little trip up a single track path into the forest, and that was a lot of fun but we didn’t venture too far.

The last day there we went up a canyon that was described in our guidebook for Bicycling in America’s National Parks. Casto Canyon is 3 miles off the main road, and used primarily by equestrians and ATVs. It was a tough ride on a bike, with creek crossings and rugged terrain, but we had the best day. We were the only two in the entire canyon and rode about 1.5 miles in and back out. We were definitely wishing we had our lighter mountain bikes instead of the heavy power bikes, but it was a great day.

And as is often the case with Rob & I, once we pointed the truck homeward, we decided to just go for it. I had planned a nice 4 day trip back with stops every 300 miles, and instead we did two days, with one quick stop at a lovely winery in Idaho, and a 699 mile day two which got us and the kitties home.

It was a gorgeous trip and we are definitely not done with Utah. There are three more National Parks to explore and endless bike riding to be done. And probably another few thousand pictures of red rocks.

Pix of our trip to SW Utah are here. SW Utah