Southern Utah Road Trip

We decided to take advantage of a short work week and pack up with some friends to go explore around Utah. It was me and four guys packed up for a 10-day long trip in the Tacoma - a tight fit to say the least. We used every inch of the bed space for coolers of food, tents, gear, clothes, and water jugs - and every inch of the cab space to fit the five of us. Grady even told us all to bring as little as we possibly could - and of course, Dave showed up with TWO full duffle bags of just clothing and gear. It was such a tight fit that I moved the front passenger seat as far forward as possible so that Austin, sitting behind me, could have a little more leg room at times. After all, it was a 17 HOUR drive(!) from Dallas to Grand Staircase Escalante, Utah. 

Once we finally made it to Grand Staircase Escalante, we were all so ready to be out of the car and moving that we maybe dove a bit more headfirst into a hike than we should have. The hike was only about 9 miles, but the route wasn’t clear at times - and our route pre-planning using Gaia GPS paid off. We thankfully found our way, but meandered a little to get there. 

When we reached our destination on the hike we had the amazing surprise of seeing climbers rappelling through a hole in the ceiling of the rock. It made the experience even cooler! After our long hike out, we ventured back to the camp - ready to have a beer and make dinner, only to find that our tent was missing... 

You don’t expect to come back to one less tent than you left, but we soon realized that with all of the brush and tumbleweeds scattered across the dusty campsite - the tent had clearly blown away! The five of us started the search and eventually found the tent over 200 yards away down in a dried up river bed after using the drone to do some aerial recon. We started to assess the damage and realized the tent poles were bent and the rainfly was ripped. Good news is our friend Dave came prepared (thanks to all of the clothes in the second bag) and we used one of his many technical layers as a rain fly.

We drove past the four corners, where Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado meet and continued on towards Bryce Canyon National Park. I personally didn’t know much of anything about Bryce Canyon before we arrived, but the drive up to the park blew me away. The hoodoos are tall spires of rock and they are everywhere! We were really fortunate to reserve a campsite within the park and spent the afternoon exploring the trails set amongst the hoodoos. A hailstorm came in quickly and cleared out most of the visitors - we basically had the whole place to ourselves for a beautiful sunset. I’d highly recommend a stop in Bryce Canyon National Park if you’re exploring around Utah - it was a really unique and otherworldly atmosphere.

From there, we continued our trip onto Zion National Park - leaving what was talked up to be the best of the Utah parks, for last. Driving into Zion was breathtaking - and the scale of the walls were hard to comprehend as we descended into the valley. We didn’t have explicit plans for our time at Zion other than to stay at our reserved campsite in the park and to hike Angel’s Landing - but there’s no shortage of hikes and viewpoints to explore and we quickly had more scoped out to see than we had time for. We did a quick sunset hike on the first night, but retreated back to our tents early because we wanted to catch the 6 am shuttle to the Angel’s Landing trailhead - hoping we’d be a part of the limited number of hikers allowed each day. I was so nervous about Angel’s Landing in the run-up to the trip - it’s a beautiful vista, and arguably the most iconic viewpoint in Zion, but there is exposed terrain up top that is narrow and has cables you can hold onto. For someone like me with a fear of heights, this was not sitting well - but I wanted to try and felt motivated to make it to the top - especially since none of the guys were worried and I needed to keep up! We couldn’t believe how many people were hiking that morning and how crowded the cables sections became with people hugging behind people to pass them - especially when people got scared of the exposure. Long story short, I bailed right before the last cables section and the guys all reached the top. Looking back on it, I definitely could have done it and I need to get redemption in the future!

The unexpected favorite part of the Zion trip was hiking the Narrows. We were worried about the temperature of the water since you’re ankle deep for most of the hike, and knee+ deep for sections, but there are outfitters nearby where you can rent neoprene booties that are like wetsuits for your feet. They made such a difference! Hiking in the Narrows far exceeded our expectations and was one of the highlights of the trip. The neoprene booties and a hiking pole/walking stick were tremendously helpful! 

By that point, we were wrapping up the trip and drove to Lake Powell in Arizona on our way back to Dallas. The bright blue water next to the red canyon walls makes Lake Powell such a beautiful, unique lake. We rented a speedboat with a tube and wakeboard - which felt like the most relaxing day after our more hiking oriented trip. We went cliff jumping, tubing, wakeboarding, and just had a blast being on the water. 

The final part of the trip was stopping in Monument Valley - which is such an iconic stretch of rock formations. The area was beautiful and we got really lucky with a beautiful sunset. Grady took pictures, we made dinner, and Dave got to live out his vision of skateboarding down the long, straight stretch of road leading to Monument Valley. We continued driving closer back to Dallas from there because the camping is very limited by Monument Valley with only a few designated campgrounds and no other camping permitted. If you can get a camping spot with views of the monuments within one of the designated campgrounds, it would be a beautiful place to spend the night.

Our 15 hour drive back to Dallas was long, uncomfortable, and SMELLY for the five of us in the Tacoma, with everyone re-situating - laying across the seats and trying to extend our legs in any way we could. The excitement of our trip ahead of us drowned out the discomfort on the way out to Utah, but there wasn’t that same excitement about returning to work on the back end. Either way, we had an amazing time in Utah and definitely plan to go back.