Utah's Mighty 5

In a classic BischCon way, rather than having a nice leisurely drive back to Portland, we couldn't resist revisiting some of Utah’s 'Mighty 5' National Parks. Having hit 4 out of the 5 in our first big National Park roadtrip in 2016, we had originally planned on completing the set by visiting Capitol Reef, but instead we squeezed in Bryce Canyon, Arches and Canyonlands and to put it simply, they were all epic! Snow capped pinnacles, bright blue skies, freezing mornings and empty parks made for some magical memories. Travel to parks the week after Thanksgiving remains a BischCon top tip.

Bryce Canyon National Park

Home to the worlds largest concentration of hoodoos, these thin rock pillars formed through erosion can be over 10 stories tall. The colours continually change throughout the day as the sun’s rays move across the  bands of reds, oranges, pinks and yellow rock. Seeing them snow capped takes it to another level. The scenic drive had some great viewpoints every couple of miles, BUT hiking down the steep trails to get up close and personal with these spires and hoodoos is an even better experience.

Although the snow capped Hoodoo’s and the bright blue skies made for great photo’s, the ice that covered much of the trail meant we both had a couple of ice skating moments, and Mel had bruised knees before we put on the crampons, but it was 100% worth it. We made it through the Peekaboo, Queens Garden and Navajo trails! Honestly probably one of our top 3 favourite parks we have ever visited - SPECTACULAR.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Arches National Park

Leaving the largest concentration of Hoodoo’s, we traveled to the worlds densest concentration of natural rock arches. The park has over 2,000 arches of different shapes and sizes making for great photo opportunities in every direction.

We did almost all the hikes in this park across two days - the hardest being the Devils Garden that is a primitive trail where you are up, over, down and around steep rocks and navigating through slot canyons that were still in the shade and had slick ice patches. Thankfully Mel with limited sense of direction has 1) Ben and 2) the Gaia - GPS mapping app. Both highly recommended…

We had many memorable moments on this trail including having to navigate around an icy lake that stretched to both sides of the canyon, leaving the only option for us to climb up the slick rock, traverse along the side of the canyon and hope we had enough grip that we didn’t slide into the water… we just about made it with dry feet!

Delicate Arch - To get to the largest freestanding arch in the park, we hiked 1.5 miles up slick rock, navigating a few icy sections (something we’re getting better at). Having been warned by the ranger that it would be ‘packed’ we were surprised to find we had it almost to ourselves, with just a few people who took our photo. It was as good as we remembered from our last visit.

Double Arch was Mel's favourite purely because it was in the opening scene of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade... for those die hard fans, the scene showed a young Indiana Jones running out of the cave entrance! We thought about recreating this but after Ben's attempt at the Forrest Gump re-enactment run in North Carolina we thought better of it!

• 

• 

• 

Canyonlands National Park

The next stop on our Utah tour was Canyonlands. A colourful landscape of you've guessed it - canyons, mesas, arches and buttes! It has 4 sections but given our time constraints we hit up the 'Island in the Sky' district due to its easy accessibility to vistas.

This park was so quiet - we pretty much had it to ourselves. We did 4/5 of the must do hikes in this section and on two of them we saw nobody! Viewpoints and picnic areas are totally deserted... which is where one of our stories comes in.

We thought this was a great moment to do a van 'clear out' which we had got into doing about once a week. Clean up, tidy, wipe down, get the water out the cooler, consolidate food shopping etc in a beautiful setting with nobody around. 3 hours later however when we had completed some spectacular viewpoints, lookouts and hikes, we settled on a picnic spot only to find we were missing the cooler. That's right it took the BischCons 3 hours and a need to actually use the cooler for lunch to even realize it was missing... Back off we go to the stop and low and behold it was in the place we'd left it! Thankful was an understatement!

We'll definitely want to return to this park and explore the other three sections. Ben had big plans this time to drive the famous ‘Shafer Trail’, descending 1,500ft into remote canyons, but unfortunately it was closed for the season. I guess we have to leave something for our next adventure…

• 

• 

• 

Capitol Reef National Park

Capitol Reef was the park we didn’t make it too in 2016, so we were excited to complete the mighty five and explore this 100 mile long warp in the Earth's Crust (or Waterpocket Fold as geologists describe it), that has formed countless cliffs, domes and canyons.

We had 1.5 days exploring the park, hiking to Cassidy Arch, Hickman Bridge and The Narrows in the Grand Wash trail. Our favourite was Cassidy Arch which was the first arch in all these parks that we have actually been able to walk over -  Made for a pretty epic photo and snack spot!

We ended the first day with a beautiful bench spot for sunset at you've guessed it... Sunset Point. We then had our coldest nights camping of the trip so far with low of 18F/-8C and snow already on the ground. Lucky we had power, so our $20 Amazon heater saved the day again and kept us warm (or warm enough). In the morning we had ice all over the exterior of the car and on the sides of the canvas pop-top. Lucky for us there was no shade so as soon as the sun started to rise it could attempt to ‘de-ice.’

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

What's Next

We’ll continue to head northwest into Nevada. We plan on stopping in Great Basin National Park, our last new park of this trip. After that if the snow and road conditions play ball, we stop by Crater Lake in Southern Oregon on the way back to Portland. Safe to say the roadtrip blues are starting to kick in…