Utah is home to five spectacular National Parks, often referred to as the Big 5. All are well worth an extended visit, but here’s a quick trip from A to Z.
Double Arch, Arches National Park
65 million years ago, this was a dry seabed. Then the sandstone was buried. Forces pushed it around creating lumps and warps. Then the whole area pushed up, and erosion started carving away. Rain erodes the stones and creates desert varnish to further color and streak the red sandstone.
Arches National Park has over 2.000 natural stone arches—the densest concentration in the world. Double Arch is the second widest as well as the tallest arch in the park. Can you see the people hiking up the trail underneath?
Mesa Arch, Canyonlands National Park
Just across from Arches NP is Canyonlands National Park. While this park is more known for the desert canyons and other features carved by the Colorado and Green Rivers, it too has arches and the most famous is Mesa Arch sitting right on the edge of the canyon in the Island in the Sky section of the park. Sunrise light hits below the arch creating a glow. Busloads of people were here just a few minutes earlier. We watched sunrise elsewhere, and as the hoards left, we still had plenty of the light show to enjoy in a more peaceful setting.
Temple of the Sun, Cathedral Valley, Capitol Reef National Park
The northernmost of the Big 5 is Capitol Reef National Park. It’s my second favorite perhaps in part because it is the least visited. The Cathedral Valley section of the park was added into the park boundaries in the 1970s and is only accessible by high clearance vehicles. The Temple of the Sun (and nearby Temple of the Moon) are right on the edge of the park. I returned to visit a couple years later to camp nearby and enjoy these rock monoliths alone under the stary sky.
Sunset Point, Bryce Canyon National Park
While named a “canyon,” the park is really an amphitheater of carved hoodoos on the edge of a high plateau. The park has by far the highest elevation of the Utah parks at over 9,000 feet, so is a relief from the summer heat, or like this image shows, it provides frigid conditions in the winter.
Watchman Mountain and Virgin River, Zion National Park
We made it to Z, and the third most visited national park in the country—a for good reason. The main part of the park is Zion Canyon carved by the Virgin River. You can hike along and in the river, up high on the tops of the mountains, in arid, slick sandstone or in dripping desert oases. Or just enjoy the view.