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Three Moab Parks
We spent the last week of September in Moab, a small town/big playground in southeastern Utah. It was still too hot for comfortable hiking and dry camping and I think October would have been better. The BLM lands around Moab have developed campgrounds (but without hookups) and are not free. We stayed at Ken’s Lake because it was the only one I could make a reservation at in advance and knew that Moab is popular and crowded. It’s popular for good reason. There are two National Parks – Arches and Canyonlands. But I think most visitors are there for the world-famous mountain biking and jeep trails. Arches National Park We…
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Capitol Reef National Park
Capitol Reef is located in the red rock country of south-central Utah. We think its remoteness, rather than lack of beauty, is what makes it one of the least visited of Utah’s 5 National Parks. Several people have told us it’s their favorite in Utah (we struggle with ranking them but think it’s our second, behind Zion). We scored a fantastic free boondocking spot on Beas Lewis Flat Road 10 miles west of the park’s entrance. We visited the 3rd week of September and had perfect weather temperature-wise, but were a bit too early because of a persistent monsoon season. Some roads were closed from a storm the weekend before…
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Lakefront Camping In Northern Utah
Michael gives me very little input regarding our destinations so when he requested a return to southern Utah to visit the 3 “Mighty Five” National Parks that we missed in 2021, that’s where we are headed! It was a 500-mile trek from Jackson, WY. On our way south we stopped at a couple of northern Utah State Parks, where we had two of the best campsites we’ve ever had! Our first stop was Bear Lake State Park, honestly because it had full hookups. We arrived on Labor Day when the campground changed to be first come first serve and we scored an incredible lakefront site. Bear Lake is a huge…
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Zion National Park
When we started out on this trip to the southwest, the only camping reservations we had were 10 nights in early May at the Watchman Campground inside Zion National Park. Zion (actually pronounced Zi-in) was at the top of our list of places to visit since several people had told us that it is their favorite park, and we can see why. Also, it’s RV friendly (we fit!) and there is a great cell signal (because the campground is close to the town of Springdale), both of which are uncommon in NPS campgrounds. Coming from Bryce, if our rig setup had been less than 50ft long, we could have entered…
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Bryce Canyon National Park
We weren’t originally planning to visit Bryce Canyon National Park this year because we would then be backtracking for the reservations we had at Zion National Park right before heading east to North Carolina. Located at the top of the Grand Staircase, Bryce is also at 8,000 feet elevation and still below freezing most nights during Spring and some of their trails do not open until the Summer. However, 4 weeks prior we had been able to snag appointments in the nearby town of Panguitch, UT for our first dose of the Moderna vaccine and wanted to be close for our second. So north on US89 we went and ended…
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In & Around Grand Staircase National Monument
After moving every weekend for the past month, we settled into a boondocking spot on BLM land 15 minutes north of Kanab, UT for two weeks in mid-April. Kanab is a really nice small town in a great location. It borders the Grand Staircase Unit of Grand Staircase-Escalante NM, is 30 min from the eastern entrance to Zion NP, 1 hour from Paria Canyon-Vermillion Cliffs NM, and 1.5 hours from the north rim of the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon NP, and Lake Powell. This entire area is a huge swath of public land with endless places to explore. Sometimes our stay here was frustrating because we couldn’t get to some…
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Glen Canyon & Lake Powell
We spent a warm and sunny first week of April at Lone Rock Beach on Lake Powell, a man-made reservoir on the Colorado River created by the Glen Canyon Dam, that straddles the Arizona/Utah border. This sprawling lake and land to the north are part of the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. The land south belongs to the Navajo Nation. I’m happy to report that we never got stuck. However, we watched other people get stuck multiple times every day and that was equally entertaining and horrifying. During his explorations, John Wesley Powell named Glen Canyon for the now legendary glens, grottoes, and sandstone formations he saw carved into this…
