Crowds, Canyons, And Pie: What I Learned Traveling Utah's National Parks in 1 Week

Note: If you are interested in a video version, please view it on YouTube.

We road-trip the Big Five in eight days, moving from Canyonlands and Arches to Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon, and Zion with honest notes on crowds, shuttles, permits, and weather. Expect practical routes, favorite hikes, and small tips that unlock big views, plus where to find the best pie.

• Canyonlands Island in the Sky highlights and overlooks
• Camping near Moab and permit basics
• Arches access, Windows area, Double Arch logistics
• Off-season timing and crowd strategies
• Capitol Reef history, Fruita orchards, Cathedral Valley
• Bryce Canyon hoodoos, key trails, elevation realities
• Zion shuttles, closures, parking, and water advisories
• Narrows approach, Emerald Pools, and missed Canyon Overlook
• Lodging mix across towns, cabins, and camps
• Upcoming individual hike videos and Q&A

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Chapters

• 0:00 Trip Overview And Big Five Plan
• 1:14 Canyonlands: Island In The Sky Highlights
• 4:09 Camping In Moab And Permits
• 6:13 Arches: Access, Windows Area, Fiery Furnace
• 9:38 When To Visit And Crowd Patterns
• 11:13 Capitol Reef: History, Orchards, Cathedral Valley
• 15:01 Bryce Canyon: Hoodoos, Trails, Shuttle
• 18:18 Zion: Shuttles, Closures, Parking Realities
• 21:05 Zion Hikes: Narrows And Emerald Pools

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hey folks, it's Craig, the Natural Medic. I apologize that I have not been putting videos out as often this month. I just went on a trip. Got back a Thursday night. I was gone eight days exploring Utah's national parks, which you may see on the screen here. Utah has what is called the Big Five. If you want to see an overview of that, stick with me and we can talk about those. Alright, so let's kind of talk about the very first place that I went. I live in Farmington, New Mexico, so I'm only three hours from Moab. Moab, of course, has two of the prominent Big Five parks in the area. One of those is Arches, of course, the other one is Canyonlands. Arches is pretty accessible, it's pretty busy, but an amazing place. Highly recommend the book, which I'm missing the name right now, but it'll come to me probably by the end of the video. Highly recommend you read that, the nature of arches as far as visitation and accessibility. Has changed quite a bit since the 1950s. Gentleman was there as a seasonal park ranger. Let's talk about the very first place that I went, which was Canyonlands National Park. Let's go take a look at it. This is the beautiful view that you see. I believe this view is a Green River overlook, which I went to. I have been there before in December, but I went to both accessible sides. The Island in the Sky, which is the one closest to Moab. Still like 20-something miles from the main of the road to get there. But that's the most popular part of the Island in the Sky district. That's where you have Mesa Arch, the Grand View, Green River Overlook, a bunch of other trails and things to do. And of course the White Rim Road, which I would love to do someday. If you don't know about that, recommend you look that up if you're into off-roading and roughing it for a couple of days. If you can get a permit. Canyon Lands is the land of canyons. You have the Green River and the Colorado River coming together in the park and creating these beautiful canyons. Hence the name Canyon Lands. I tried to stay in all the park's campgrounds were full. Canyonlands Island and the Sky District campground only has like 12 sites, so I guess it stays booked all the time. I'm gonna try to keep this video somewhat short. I did Mesa Arch, I did Upheaval Dome, I went to Grand View. I did three hikes there during the day, and I have individual videos on those that'll be coming out in the future. So if you want to see those, make sure you like this. Share this video with your friends so they can see other things. This is an overview guide to the five national parks in a week. Each individual park, probably you could see in a week and not do all the things. There's a lot to do at each of these parks because they're pretty large and lots of things that you could get involved with. This kind of gives you an idea of the whole park. You have Island in the Sky up here in this part. This is the part that I went to this time. You have the maze over here, you have the rivers themselves, and you have the needles. All of those areas are not connected, amazingly enough. So it's a pretty rugged, undeveloped part. I mean, there's roads in there and places to get to different things, but you really just can't drive from Dialing Sky District to the needles or the maze. You have to actually go to those, each area of the park individually. Looking forward to that in the future. But I did spend time at Canyon Lands first. I ended up camping out the first two nights in a tent in Moab. I found a hip camp. I can show you that. I stayed in that campground for two nights. I only got down until upper 30s, and I had pretty comfortable sleeping. There was a shower house, a place to wash dishes for cooking. I could walk to a lot of the stuff in Moab, which was nice. I had not been to Canyonlands before. I wanted to focus on that for this trip, going to Canyonlands more and going to the Upheaval Dome hike, which I did, the Grand View hike, which I did, and the Mesa Arch hike recommended by the Park Ranger at the visitor center. It was pretty busy, but not as busy as Arches. I ended up going to Arches the next day. This is the Schaefer Road that connects to the White Rim Road. As you can see, pretty rugged, it goes along the edge of the canyon. And you can do that. There's lots of places to go and hike. Let's look at that briefly, then we'll move on to the next park. None of the parks were charging admission. I have my annual park pass, America the Beautiful Pass. It's$80. I definitely recommend you if you're going to go to parks. We're still on shutdown right now as of this recording. But it says difficult conditions, complicate Cataract Canyon, which is one of the river access points. I had no issues with any of the park stuff while the services were closed. Utah is using state funds right now to staff the parks and to keep things moving. It says expect long lines. There was a lot of people parking at the visitor center when I came in. The visitor center is the first place you come into past the entrance station. I think at Zion they were manning the ones on the east side, but they weren't taking any funds. Doesn't make much sense to me, but it is what it is. So it gives you some ideas of what's going on, construction and programs and so forth. Super cool place. It's very undeveloped for the most part. Paved roads that you can access, most of the stuff. In the island in the sky district, and in the needles. I've been to both. I'd like to go to Needles next time and explore that some more. When I was there in December, I didn't get to really see. Let's go to Arches. The Arches are what I went to next. On my way out, I went to Arches. Arches, of course, has a delicate arch, a whole bunch of other. There's like 2,000 arches in Arches National Park, so I guess it's named. There are some alerts here. Let's look at these alerts real quick. They are not doing the timed entry pilot, which is supposed to be designed to throttle the visitation because it's so close to Moab. You can literally drive across the river from Moab going north, and you're right there at Arches. So it's very accessible from Moab. And because of that, it's busy. I went down to the windows area of the park. Back in December, I did the part of the Devil's Garden. I did Delicate Arch. Some other side arches on the side. Went to the overview area of the fiery furnace. I have not hiked the fiery furnace yet because you have to have a permit to go in there or go on a ranger-guided hike. So that's upcoming, hopefully. I was told by one of the rangers, one of the volunteers, and somebody else that hiked the fiery furnace, and they said it was amazing. That's why I'm doing this video. When it's probably one of the best times to visit the Utah National Parks. The busy season for most of them is March to November. When you get to December, January, and February. It's gonna be cold. It's cold. But it's not so cold that you can't stand it, except maybe higher elevation. The hike that I did, let's go to the hikes. I hiked to the window. I didn't hike to this window. I was in the windows area though, and I did the double O. Let me look. Double arch. Sorry, double arch. So I did this one. It's not a very long trail hike, but you'll see a video I did of that one coming up soon. I had not gone to the windows area. That's one place we didn't make it to when I was over there before. It's a short hike. Most of the hikes in the windows area are flat ground. I mean, you are up at elevation a little bit, but not too bad. The problem is I had to drive around a couple of times in that parking lot, even though it's a really large parking area, to find a parking spot, and I finally did. One thing to keep in mind there are restrictions on dogs. That's a lot of people bringing dogs on the trail that's not allowed. So don't do that. Even though people are not, don't bring your dog on the trail that is not allowed. Follow the rules and regulations of the park while you're there. This third park I went to is located near Utah. South Central. Canyon lands are southeast. Utah. They're close to each other. Moving up west, I went to Capitol Reef. By far, this remains my favorite park, even though I visited all five of them. I had not been to Bryce before, but I had been to Capitol Reef, arches, canyon lands, and Zion. Even though Bryce is magnificent and wonderful. I love Capitol Reef. I did hike to the Hickman Bridge, which is a natural bridge, it's not an arch. There is a place called Natural Bridge in Bryce, which we'll show you in one of the videos coming up, that is called a bridge, but it's actually an arch because of the way it's configured. The interesting thing about Reef is the reason it was called Capital Reef in the first place. Domes there. And I don't know if I have a picture of those domes on this website that I can show you. See if I can find a map for you. Places to go. Let's look at the water pocket district. This is kind of what it looks like. It's a pretty rugged terrain. Capitol Reef is not very developed. Moab and are not far off of I-70 and some other major roads. I think it's that goes through there. U.S. Highway. Pretty good accessibility. It's a little bit harder to get to Capitol Reef. No interstates nearby, no airports nearby, so you kind of have to drive there. And it's far from a lot of things. Which is why I like it. It's not as crowded, it's not as busy, and it's pretty undeveloped for the most part. One of the neat things about it, which I'll talk about in a second, is there's an old Mormon community there in the middle of the park, which you definitely need to visit. But the reason, and I was trying to find a map, but I don't see a map at this particular time. Let me see if I can find one. They got a map on here. Where is the map at? They got a community called Fruta. It's an old Mormon community. It was established in the late and it was active until the 1940s, which is crazy. But a small Mormon community lived there. They had orchards, all kinds of things, which is pretty amazing how isolated they were. Let's see. You can be a bark ranger, but you can take your dog on the trail from the visitor center to the campground, the Fremont River Trail, any unfenced or unlocked orchards, the within 50 feet of the center line of roads, paved orchard, and any parking areas. They have a thing called the Bark Ranger, which means bag your poop. Always wear a leash. Respect the wildlife and know where you can go. Places you can go with your pet is places you cannot. Just abide by that and everything will be cool. It'll be good for everybody. There are some alerts here at this park. They have monsoon flash floods, which happened back in September. They had a lot of rain, but I didn't see an issue with it. Even though I drove through the Fremont River to get to the Cathedral Valley area, it was about 12 inches deep. I didn't even put it in a four-wheel drive. My truck was able to drive through no problem. They're also talking about the orchards. 3,000 orchard trees there from the Mormon community that was there prior to the park. Unfortunately, this year, normally you can pick fruit from the orchard on the honor system, you just weigh it out and pay a fee. They don't have fruit this year because of a freeze. But they do have the Gifford House, which has pies. I definitely recommend going to that. It's really neat. And if you have a capable vehicle and the conditions are right, go to Cathedral Valley. There's a lot of hikes. Interesting things. Without focusing too much on this place, let's go to the next place. We're going to talk about another park, which is called Bryce Canyon. I had not been to Bryce. That was the only park I had not been to. Even though I used to go to St. George fairly often to visit friends of I'd never been to Bryce, but look at this. This is a beautiful hoodoo field. Come from the Paiute word. It's one of the native people that used to live in that area. They actually said oodus, but of course, us European people misunderstood what they were saying, and a lot of people were saying hoodoos, so it kind of got mistranslated to hoodoos. The Paiute belief is that the coyote spirit, who is a trickster god, like Loki in mythology, people that were bad, he imprisoned in these things. So think about all those spirits that were imprisoned in here, and I guess after they fall down, their spirit is released back into the universe. Interesting belief. Bryce is probably the smallest of the five national parks. I think it's about 53,000 acres. It's pretty busy and accessible, built up just like the Moab area design, which we'll get to shortly. Bryce is no different. It's got a lot of the edge of the park. You've got a community there, which is pretty much park focused with hotels, restaurants, and other things to do besides park stuff. The day that I got there was the last day that they had shut the shuttle down. That was the 19th. The 19th was the last day the shuttles were running. They are still running shuttles in Zion, which we'll get to. You have to ride a shuttle right now in order to access the park or majority of the park. But in Bryce, I was able to drive pretty much the whole scenic dry, which is like 18 one way all the way to the end. Hiked a few trails. There's some bristle cone pines there. Bryce is at higher elevation though, so it snows pretty heavily, that's what I understand. There's a lot of cool places to hike. I hiked the Bristlecone Trail, I hiked the Mossy Cave Trail, and I hiked the most famous trail that they say, like the best one you have to do if you have to do one trail. The Navajo Garden, which is actually two trails combined together. And saw Queen Queen Elizabeth, the hoodoo, not the actual person, because she's long been passed away. And I also saw a lot of other hoodoos because you're able to walk down amongst the hoodoos, whereas most of the other trails you're in viewpoints and stuff way above them. There are other trails that you can do there. I didn't have time to do them because of my time limitation. I thought it was pretty cool. This kind of shows you an overview right here. Got the visitor center as you come into the park. You have Fairyland Point. Bryce Canyon City is right here, right outside of the point, the entrance part. There is a little bit of the National Forest. I believe it's the Dixie National Forest on the edge. I was really surprised. I mean, even though you look at this picture over here, all these hoodos. I was really surprised at how many trees were in Bryce. But I guess it's because it's at higher elevation. This is one of the ones that I hiked here, the Queen's Garden Trail. It doesn't have Navajo on there for some reason. Yeah, here's Navajo right here. Navajo and Queen's Garden. I did those. And then way down here, you don't see on this little map here. Oh, here's a little guy. Randy Ringtail and Ruby the hummingbird. Oh my gosh. That's funny. Of course, if you have kiddos, all of these parks offer junior ranger programs, even with the shutdown. Bryce's alerts. Look at those real quick. Then we'll pop over to Zion real quick. Amazingly enough, they have no alerts. So that's crazy. Government shutdown is still in effect as of right now when I'm recording this on the 27th of October. Some of the services may not be available as much. I didn't see any kind of issues with any of the services that were offered. But that may be coming. Zion, probably the busiest of all the parks that I went to, but one of the most magnificent. I mean, look at that picture right there. These beautiful cliffs and this beautiful rainbow shooting up. Let's see what the deals are going on right here. So right now, because of uh funding, the Zion History Museum, Human History Museum, and the Kolob Canyon Center are not open. There's an area of interstate to the north towards Cedar City from St. George called the Kolob Canyons. I haven't been to that area yet. I'm going to go there probably in the off-season. So it's a little bit more accessible, not as many crowds. Those are closed right now because of government funding or lack thereof. You shouldn't drink the water because they have cyanobacteria in there. No fires. They have a permitting deal. Parking is an issue at Zion. It's probably the oldest of the five Utah parks. They didn't really think about how popular automobile travel would be. So during the majority of the year, you have to ride a shuttle. But shuttles are available free of charge in Springdale, which is the nearest town, right outside the south part of the park. You can park there. It's not cheap. I think I parked there for$30 and then realized I could park at the visitor center. That was a mess up on my part. Then you ride a shuttle to different stops throughout the park and you can get off at certain stops to different hikes and activities. I can't go through all this in one video, so I apologize for that. I hope this is giving you a good overview. It's open 24 hours a day. They operate the shuttle through November, and after that, you're allowed to bring your car and then drive around. There's not a lot of parking. Due to the nature of the park and canyon that the Virgin River carved out over time. Could be an issue water if you were doing overnight because toxic cyanobacteria in there. It's a pretty cool park. Despite. This gives you an idea of the ones that I went to. I started off with staying in Moab and I went to Arches, then up to the Reef, then to Bryce, and then to Zion. I stayed in Airbnb's the majority of the time. I did two nights in a campground in Arches. I did one night in an RV park that I found in Airbnb. It was a little camper cabin. I stayed two nights in an old hotel probably from the 30s called Bryce Canyon Motel. And then I stayed at an Airbnb in Hurricane, which is about 23, 24 miles from Zion, for the last part of the trip. Then I drove back to my home in Farmington. I think it was a cool trip. This kind of gives you an overview. There are no shuttles at arches, reef or cedar brakes, but there's definitely shuttles that you have to take the year in Zion. And then Bryce Canyon has a shuttle that runs to help with some congestion. Let's go back to Zion for a minute and talk about it. I did a couple of hikes there. I did the narrows, which is where you can hike in the narrow part of the canyon. The farthest end of the drive that you can go on with the shuttle. You can get off at stop nine and walk down a kind of a rough sidewalk. It's paved so that people can access it in a wheelchair. One lady in a wheelchair being pushed and she's having a good time. So people with mobility issues can access near the river. And I think after that you can walk up the river about 12 or so miles to explore the narrows. Something on my list, but I didn't do it this time. Also did the Emerald Pools, which there's three of those. I was going to do a hike called the Canyon Overlook. When you go through the tunnel on the east side, which was created in 1930, you have a parking issue. The shuttle buses can't get through there, but you can drive your own vehicle. If you can find parking, you can hike the trail. I didn't find any parking, so I wasn't able to go. Hope I gave you a good overview. If I did, give this video a thumbs up so other people consider subscribing to the channel so you don't miss videos. I'm gonna have individual videos on all the hikes that I did and all the different things that I saw. Let me know your questions or comments. If you're listening on the podcast, click on the let me know what you're thinking. I'd love to answer those for you. I hope you enjoyed the video. Until next time, I'll see you on the trail. Bye bye.