BRYCE NATIONAL PARK MOVIE
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I set off from Arches for a drive through Capitol Reef National Park, en route to Utah Scenic Byway 12. With a mildly harrowing moment of being lost, alone in the dark on a steep mountain in the middle of the Utah desert now behind me, I figured my Official Road Adventure for the day was already completed. The trail is quite well marked out with signage. On the way back down, I could only laugh at myself for my circuitous and almost dead-end journey.

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The rain I feared would ruin the affair and mask the sunrise instead provided a welcome surprise of a rainbow … no two rainbows! The whole lot of half a dozen people who braved the sunrise trek - none of whom managed a seamless journey up, I should add, though all of our wrong turns and missteps occurred in different places - went full Double Rainbow Guy on the scene. Retracing my steps, I eventually found a more proper path across and then up, and still managed to make it up to the beautiful scene in time to witness sunrise.

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What I took to be one uphill trail was more like a comb, with a series of narrow prongs extending up into the sky from a shared base. I soon found myself on the literal precipice, staring straight down at a grisly demise, after I missed a turn and ventured up an incorrect and unfortunate side path. I wrongly assumed that by the time I was underway, the whispers of dawn would provide sufficient lighting for an easily marked and plotted trail, and therefore departed with neither a head lamp nor enough time spent researching my route. Arches was recently declared an official International Dark Sky Park, so there are no streetlights to set the scene.

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It was a surreal experience driving through, like being on a movie set with none of the stage lights on, and therefore having no idea of the majesty of what towered next to you on the road.

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Spend a night in Moab, a five-mile jaunt away from the park’s entrance, and incorporate either a sunset or a sunrise expedition into the itinerary.Ĭhoosing the latter, I embarked for the three-mile hike to Delicate Arch – the scene showcased on the Utah license plate - in the pitch black at 5 a.m. Planning for a full day visit is an even better choice, though, or you can consider a two-day approach.

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If you have time for a few quick walks, head to Balanced Rock, The Windows - pop around the back of the formation for your only chance to see both at once - and right across the same parking area, the domed Double Arch. In a hurry, you could do a full circuit while stopping for some photos in about three hours. The main road through Arches spans 18 miles in each direction, in addition to several potential side roads you can take through the park. Whether you hunker down in an RV or a tent, find a secluded cabin or a boutique hotel, the wide open expanse of the state’s natural beauty beckons. Of course, when it comes to traveling in the midst of the ongoing pandemic, such a journey makes all the more sense.

You can knock out Utah’s “Mighty 5” slate of national parks in one clean pass, while adding in a handful of national monuments, forests and recreation areas for good measure. One world-class, bucket-list scenic destination today, two more tomorrow. Whether you do it over the course of a long weekend or an entire week, that’s more or less the agenda of a trip spent driving across southern Utah. No, those sprawling, dramatic desert and mountain shots from the early seasons of the show were shot all the way in Canyonlands National Park, the entrance of which lies a whopping 10 miles away, providing you with yet another national park you can check off your list while cruising through Utah. It feels like you’re visiting the park in Westworld, though that couldn’t possibly be true. The drive through Arches feels more like you’re visiting a theme park than a national park, as if you were riding on a slow-moving trolley through a massive, purpose-built stage scene. The stark stone facade seems to be warning visitors that you’re no longer in the domain of the human, but rather, you’ve entered a geological realm forged by millions of years of accumulated history, unrelenting weather and erosion, the time scales and physical dimensions of which you cannot begin to fathom. It happens about 30 seconds after you’ve entered, as you take your first right turn and begin a steep uphill ascent in the shadow of a massive, sheer red cliff that runs alongside the road. It doesn’t take long to get your first jaw-dropping view of Arches National Park.

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