Utah's Mighty Five Road Trip

This article is under development and it may take a few days before I have the entire trip documented!

Planning Essentials 

On all my trips I make sure we have a solid plan on what we are going to do along with ideas for backups.   I aim to maximize the amount of time we can spend exploring when visiting destinations 1,500 miles away from home!

This was my third time at Bryce Canyon and it never ceases to disappoint!   This trip combined with the trip from two years ago together gave us a great tour of the park.  It would be possible to do both days in one but only if you were staying in the area both the night before and the following night.   Two years ago we wanted to arrive at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and this year we wanted to end up near Capitol Reef National Park.

Many people do not realize this but Zion National Park can be divided into four sections Zion Canyon (the main hub), The Narrows, Kolob Canyons, and the Kolob Terrace/East Zion.   We started our second day of Zion visiting the main hub (Zion Canyon) entering from the East side via the town of Springdale.  Zion National park is the second most visited US National Park with approximately 4.9 million visits per year and we happened to visit on an extremely busy day.

Many people do not realize this but Zion National Park can be divided into four sections Zion Canyon (the main hub), The Narrows, Kolob Canyons, and the Kolob Terrace/East Zion.   We started with Kolob Canyon as we were coming from the North with the intent to start working our way east.   Most people visit the main part of the park which was definitely noticeable as Kolob Canyons was quite peaceful whereas the main part of the park was quite crowded!  

Cedar Breaks National Monument sits an elevation of  over 10,000 feet, according to a web search the highest point is 10,662 feet, and we had a photo of a sign when we were at 10,460 feet!  Quite the ascent from Central Minnesota!   Cedar Breaks is often referred to as a mini Bryce Canyon has it does have similar rock formations and colorations.   It does have the advantage of much smaller crowds but be aware that, like Bryce, the elevation can be disconcerting for those who are not used to it!

Timpanogos Cave National Monument is actually three caves and you do need to hike a mile and a half with an elevation gain of  1,092 ft with the cave entrance being 6,730 feet above sea level.    The caves are all connected via a human made tunnel so you will be able to hike them all in one tour.  Reservations are strongly encouraged and make sure you bring a copy with you printed on paper.    We took one of the first tours, 8:30 am, so that we could do the hike before it became too hot!

The boys first learned of this museum years ago when watching Dinosaur Train, I promised that we would visit some day and this was an opportunity to deliver on that promise.  The advantage of visiting the Natural History Museum of Utah was we were able to get a bit more history on the dinosaur bones we viewed the day before along with exhibits pertaining to Utah's geology.   Helpful information with all the parks, monuments, and landscapes we would be viewing over the next few days.

Another quick stop where we only visited the visitor center and the Quarry Exhibit Hall.  This exhibit is a building that is built around a cliff that has over 1,500 dinosaur fossils!   It gives visitors an opportunity to see dinosaur fossils, in the cliff, as they are normally found by scientists!   This hall is just a small part of the park as the entire park encompasses 210,844 acres!   We all hope to visit the monument again someday to see more of what it has to offer.    It served as a nice place to stop at before we checked into our hotel.

Devils Tower National Monument is situated just west of Rapid City/Mount Rushmore in Wyoming, visit the NPS page for full details on this unique structure.   It was formed by magma being pushed up into sedimentary rock, which cooled, and formed hard igneous rock.   Overtime the surrounding sedimentary rock eroded away leaving this tower!