Utah

On Saturday morning, we arrived to Salt Lake before noon and headed to Sandy to visit Shawn's cousin, Nate, his wife, Jo, and their two kiddos Addison and Anna, who had graciously offered to host us for the night. When we arrived, Jo was eager to go hiking and we are always up for a good walk. Nate offered to stay home with the girls and prepare dinner for when we got back.

A short drive from Nate and Jo's is the Lake Blanche Trail (7 miles, 2700 ft elevation gain). This trail is a fantastic way to spend the afternoon. The leaf-peeping was spectacular; autumn in the mountains is the best. There was a little bit of snow by the lake, as you can see, but the weather was gorgeous and we were comfortable without jackets. The trail took us about 3.5 hours in total and we were back home by dinner time to an excellent grilled feast prepared by Nate. Still on East Coast time, we were in bed pretty early!

We awoke early and enjoyed a good visit with the family before heading off to Moab and Arches National Park, about a 4-hour drive through some unexciting areas. Our plan for Arches was pretty simple: hike as many trails as possible in 2 days and watch sunset at Delicate Arch (so cliche! but it was great). We arrived a little after lunch-time and started in on our goal. The drive to the Windows area is fantastic, looking along the Courthouse Towers in this otherworldly terrain. We stopped at Balanced Rock and then hiked to Double Arch, the Windows and Turret Arch. These trails are super easy and quite crowded, but the landscape is unlike anywhere else in our country and none of these areas should be missed.

We continued up the Main Park Road to Sand Dune Arch trailhead where we hiked the loop to Sand Dune Arch, Broken Arch and Tapestry Arch. This trail was much quieter than the Windows area, we pretty much had the place to ourselves. We rested for a while and enjoyed the scenery and solitude.

Since we knew we were going to be in the park for the day, we had packed PB&Js for dinner and then headed back down to the trailhead for Delicate Arch. The hike to Delicate Arch is not easy. I'm a little embarrassed to admit this because by elevation standards (480 feet) and distance (3 miles), it sounds like a piece of cake. It's a very exposed trail on slickrock and it's a cattle-trail of people trudging up a fairly steep incline. I'd highly advise not doing this trail on a hot summer's day. Sunrise and sunset are the busiest times for the trail for good reason. The sunset was beautiful - I promise we were there even though we look photo-shopped.

Our accommodation in Moab was a cute little B&B on the south side of town: Moab Beds and Bagels. It was clean, cozy and uniquely decorated. We still remember the shower which had corrugated metal walls. And we could self-check in so we didn't need to be there at a certain time. Love places like this, they always make our trips memorable!

We woke up fairly early to a substantial spread of bagels and cream cheese, coffee and juices provided by our super kind hostess (I wish I could remember her name! She was fabulous!). We were in the park before 8am with a plan to hike all of Devil's Garden via the Primitive Trail loop (7.2 miles in total). Since we started fairly early (the bonus of still being on east-coast time), the crowds were minimal and we really took our time to explore all of the arches we saw: Pine Tree Arch, Navajo Arch, Partition Arch, Landscape Arch, Double O Arch, Dark Angel and Private Arch. Seems like if you've seen one arch, you've seen them all but that couldn't be more wrong. Each one has such unique look. We loved them all, but our favorite was probably Partition Arch, because it was huge and the view of the valley was expansive. The hike from the trailhead into Landscape Arch is fairly easy. Landscape Arch (arguably the second most photographed arch after Delicate) was very cool too.

Landscape Arch to Double O Arch is a more challenging route and steep in places, but well worth the effort. I always prefer a loop trail over an out and back, so we took the Primitive Trail which was somewhat challenging and required some rock scrambling, but the cool rock formations (they look like fins!) made it completely worth it. I think we saw maybe 2 small groups of hikers on this section of the trail. We ate a snack and relaxed for a while enjoying the sunshine. Fall is always such a great time to take a vacation - in most areas of the country, rainy days are fewer this time of year so we've been pretty fortunate with great weather for hiking on most of our fall trips.

We were back to the B&B by mid-afternoon and we showered and decided on an early dinner at the Moab Brewery, pretty decent place.

Moab is an awesome place to visit and any active traveler could easily spend a week (month-year++) there mountain biking, camping, kayaking, etc. There is no shortage of entertainment, so we were a little reluctant to leave but still looking forward to what was ahead.

After another carb-tastic breakfast, we were on the road for mostly a travel day, with lots of pit-stops to break up the driving. We decided to skip Canyonlands in favor of visiting a few of Utah's state parks. Our first stop was Dead Horse Point State Park, about a 45- minute drive from our B&B. It looks a lot like Horseshoe Canyon and it's worth the drive in. Like true tourists, we got out of the car, enjoyed the scenery, snapped a few pictures and hopped back in the car. No judgement. Our next stop, 1.75 hours away, was Goblin Valley State Park. This place is a little hidden gem. It looks like a giant was making globs in the mud that turned into rock. These globs are called hoodoos or 'goblins' - just like the hoodoos in Bryce Canyon, but much squatter. There are 3 valleys in this state park and we spent the majority of our time in the first and second. There are many trails that weave through the goblins and we spent an hour or two just meandering through the formations.

Back on the road to Bryce Canyon via Capitol Reef and Escalante. This was the longest portion of the drive but it was really scenic and we stopped frequently for picture-taking, to enjoy the desert landscape or the forest with aspens. It was a great drive, though we got travel-weary after a while because a lot of large RVs also think this is a great drive and they go verrrry slowly. Patience is a must. Not our forte.

Our lodging for the night was a yurt in Hatch that we found on AirBnB - it was epic. Look at that little guy, and so many amenities on the inside! We didn't realize that Bryce Canyon was at such high elevation, and it was 30 degrees that night but our yurt was toasty warm.

You need to wear layers in Bryce Canyon. You can see from our photos that we were wearing all the layers, or a T-shirt. The visitors center is at 7800 ft above sea level, and Rainbow point is above 9000 ft. It's chilly in the morning, but as you descend into the canyon and the sun rises high, it heats right up!

We chose two hikes on this day. Before the crowds hit, we tramped the most popular trail in the park: the Queen's Garden/ Navajo Loop trail (~3 miles, 600 foot elevation gain, I love a loop trail). Picture opportunities are everywhere and it's a trail not to be missed. It was a fairly quick walk on our seasoned legs, so next up we did the Fairyland Loop trail (8 miles, 1700 foot elevation gain). This trail was much quieter, we maybe saw 10 people, and it was spectacular. We stopped at Tower Bridge and Fairyland Point and the views were something. The most memorable part for us was the changing colors of the hoodoos. In the Amphitheater, they mostly appear orange, but in Fairyland, there are more pink and white hoodoos all around. Like Moab, you could spend a full week exploring Bryce, but we were on the road again to Zion by mid-afternoon - our final leg of our journey.

We stayed outside the park in Springdale mostly for cost and ease of travel (Zion is accessed by shuttle bus only). Our lodging was average but reasonably-priced which we prioritized because we knew we wouldn't be spending a ton of time there.

The two hikes we did in Zion are both bucket list hikes for any avid hiker: Angel's Landing and The Narrows. Angels Landing is a fin of rock with epic 360 degree views. It's a moderate hike by our standards (5.4 miles, 1500 foot elevation gain) but the climb up the fin requires some intense concentration and focus. We started early (~7am) to avoid crowds, but we wish we would have started earlier - even in the fall that trail is busy.

The first couple miles are along the West Rim Trail up to Walter's Wiggles (I don't love switchbacks), and then you are at Scout's Lookout which is where you can see the fin of rock and the final climb to the top of the Landing. This is a nice spot to rest and contemplate the hike up the fin, and if you're lucky watch some rock climbers on the adjacent face. There is a single chain the entire way up the fin of Angel's Landing, but note it needs to serve two-way traffic. It's kind of scary in places with the steep drop offs on either side. I'm not super afraid of heights but it was still a gut-check. For me, it aligned pretty similarly with the fear of going up the cables at Half Dome in Yosemite, you just put one foot in front of the other and don't think too much about it. The views from the top were fantastic and since it was still early in the morning, things weren't too washed out. The longer we stayed, the worse our pictures got just from the sun being overhead.

We lingered on the top longer than we should have mentally preparing for the walk down the fin which we thought was going to be a lot worse than the walk up looking down the sheer wall of rock. But, turns out it wasn't so bad at all, it just required a lot of communication with hikers going in either direction. Because we were down off the rock before lunch, we decided to continue on to Emerald Pools. It was stiflingly full of people and not very exciting to us, but the exercise is always welcome.

We headed back to our hotel, got cleaned up and headed over to Zion Adventure Company to pick up our gear rental for The Narrows. They were a great company to work with, friendly, full of great information and the gear was in great shape.

We ate dinner at Whiptail Grill, a converted gas station - it was awesome.

We woke up early and got a hearty breakfast at Oscar's Cafe and were off to our second epic hike. The Narrows is a slot canyon and the narrowest section of Zion Canyon. The trail is the river, so appropriate gear is essential: water boots and water-proof pants, and we also got walking sticks which were beyond helpful for not slipping every other step on the uneven rocks beneath the water's surface. You can hike from the Bottom Up, or the Top Down and certain portions require permits so depending on your itinerary, a consult with NPS website is important. It's also necessary to look at river conditions, water levels and flash-flood warnings. People die on this trail from flash floods, so a safety-first mentality is important.

We hopped off the bus at the Temple of Sinawava and walked down the Riverside walk to hike the Bottom Up approach as an out and back. I will impress upon you ladies - go to the bathroom before you go. It's hard to find a place in the canyon to pop-a-squat without another person nearby. It was days like this day that I wished I was a guy.... The morning was pretty chilly, so like in Bryce, layers were important. The trail was fairly busy for the first half-mile walking in the river, but after that the crowds thinned out - we often felt alone and then would walk around a corner and see a group of waders like us. The Narrows is one of the most unique hikes we've ever done and we loved every minute. The geology was cool, it was challenging in a completely different way than usual, there were places to stop and rest outside of the water so we could take pictures and look around. It was a great time.

We turned around short of Orderville Canyon - we'd had enough at this point and I think that's another great thing about this section, you can turn around when you're good - the hike is all about the journey. After a vital bathroom break at the bus stop, we took the bus back, returned our gear to Zion Adventures and headed back to the hotel.

I had left my phone at hotel because I knew it wouldn't work in the canyon and I had 6 missed calls from my sister. Instantaneous panic. My sis and I have a deal that one missed call means we just wanted to chat, take your time calling back. Two means it's important, call quickly. I had SIX. Ubboy. I braced myself and called her - Ash picked up on the first ring and shared her news: she was pregnant - surprise! Eight months later, our niece, Lorelei, made her way into this world. I'll always remember our Narrows day and that phone call :)

The next day, we set out for the 2 hour drive to Vegas and our return flight to RDU, all pretty uneventful which was most welcome after a really eventful vacation week!