Park Hopping

Dave says: Our original plan following Ironhorse was to head back through Salt Lake and up to Yellowstone. However, with the weather forecast calling for snow in Yellowstone and highs for the week in the mid 40s, we decided to switch up our adventure. Our new itinerary took us through five national parks in five days and it turned out to be a great trip.

Our first stop was Mesa Verde which was only a short drive from Durango. We began with a tour of Balcony House which involved climbing a 35 foot ladder into an alcove and crawling through several tiny passageways to traverse this unique structure built right into the rock nearly 1,000 years ago. Next up was Cliff Palace, the biggest of the cliff dwellings. Finally, we visited Spruce Tree House where we were able to go into one of the kivas and see a lot of very well preserved rooms. It was a pleasant day at the park with few visitors and great weather. We stayed at the park until sunset before heading into Cortez to find a cheap motel.

The next day we headed to Moab to see Arches. We began our visit with a hike out to Delicate Arch and for me this was the most impressive thing that I saw on the entire trip. You come around a corner into a natural amphitheater and it is right there on the edge of the cliff sticking up out of the sandstone. Although the entire week was supposed to be a mid season rest week for Alisha, we took several more hikes to see Double Arch, Landscape Arch, and several of the other famous sights. We rolled back into Moab for some Thai curry before crashing at the Lazy Lizard Hostel. We scored a log cabin that looked like a tuff shed for $30 a night.

Day 3 was a trip out to Canyonlands. This park doesn't have a single big sight like many other national parks do and as a result it was a bit more quiet and off the beaten path. We admired the views from Dead Horse Point and I spotted a dirt road coming off the cliffs in Canyonlands leading down into the canyon below. The map at the visitors center said that it was for 4x4s only but I was feeling a little left out not having an off road vehicle in Moab, the 4x4 capital of the world, so I asked a ranger about the road. He said it was in good condition although a 2 wheel drive car had gotten high centered on it a week ago. Nevertheless, I decided that we were going to give it a shot despite a bit of nervousness from Alisha. After a brief trip out to Grand View Point where we arrived just in time to hear a ranger talk on the geology of the park, I turned the Ford Focus onto the dirt road and we headed down a steep trail onto the White Rim and then down to the river below. Despite seeing only Jeeps on the trail, we barely even scraped bottom and I got my fix of off roading for the trip.

We spent the night in Cedar City and the next day I planned an adventure with my dad and Katie into Zion. On the advice of a friend of my dad's, we took a route that bushwacked along one of the creeks in Kolob which offered some great scenery and rock scrambling. Katie was trooper and went over all sorts of terrain the entire day without a problem. We also had a fun time visiting with Alisha's family and seeing Brody. He showed me his newly acquired skills on the tricycle and is a lot of fun as always.

The final leg of our trip took us over to Great Basin National Park. However, before leaving town I dusted off my parents' 4 wheeler and took Alisha on a spin out through the dirt roads to the land that my parents own just like I used to do when we were dating in high school. The drive to Great Basin took us through all sorts of unique little Utah towns that we had never been through and there would be long stretches of time where we wouldn't see another car on the road. We camped in the park at around 8,000 feet but the road out of the campground took us partway up Wheeler Peak and into the snow in only a few minutes. I cooked us an extremely deluxe dinner of canned pot roast and a loaf of bread from Great Harvest and we went to a ranger program on big horned sheep before calling it a night. In the morning we toured Lehman Caves which is quite an impressive cavern in the park before heading back to SLC. It was a fun little trip that made me realize how many cool things there are to do in a day's drive from our house.