In late March / early April, we traveled to a number of state and National Parks in Utah and Arizona.  This was a business trip to Glen Canyon National Recreation Area that we extended into a longer driving vacation.  We visited Goblin Valley State Park (Utah), Capital Reef National Park, Kodachrome Basin State Park (Utah), Bryce Canyon National Park, Zion National Park, Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park (Utah), Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Rainbow Bridge National Monument, and Natural Bridges National Monument.  We spent the most time at Zion (camping two nights) and Glen Canyon (for work).  For most other parks we spent only a short time and will return to learn more about them.

Driving down Utah SR-24 (off of I-70) looking south.  We think these peaks in the distance were in Canyonlands National Park.

03/30/07

About 12 miles off of SR-24 is Goblin Valley State Park.  We spent a good two hours walking around these

'goblin' rock formations.  For scale, most of these formations were a good 6-8 feet high.

We spent a short time in Capital Reef National Park.  It was beautiful.  One of the domes looks like the

Capital building in Washington.  The park had beautiful scenery, petroglyphs, and orchards.

Fremont Petroglyphs

From Capital Reef we headed south on Utah SR-12.  It is a beautiful drive.  This shot was taken on SR-12

north of Boulder, UT.  It is looking east towards Capital Reef with Canyonlands in the background.

South of Boulder, SR-12 passes through Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument (shown below).

At one point the road travels along the spine of a hill with good dropoffs on both sides.  Beautiful scenery.

Hiking in Kodachrome Basin State Park on the Eagles View Trail.

This one was a bit sketchy for a five year old so we turned around quickly.

03/31/07

Instead we hiked to Shakespeare Arch and continued on the Sentinel Trail loop.

Bryce Canyon National Park.  We did not spend much time here.  It is pretty high

elevation (cold) and we needed to get to Zion to set up camp.

Cooper was very excited to camp at Zion.  He wanted to sleep in his new tent from G&G T.

He kept saying he wanted to sleep in his tent alone which we didn't think he would do (and we

were not really too comfortable with the idea either).

Near bedtime we proposed putting his tent in our tent so we could be together and he

could sleep in his tent.  He was pretty excited about this idea.

The view from our campsite.

04/01/07

We hiked to Weeping Rock and along the Virgin River in the Temple of Sinawava.

Cooper mostly liked throwing rocks in the river.

On the way out of Zion we hiked to the Canyon Overlook Trail.

04/02/07

Here's the view at the end of the short trail.  The road down can be seen in the lower left part of the photograph.

Possibly the highlight of the trip for Cooper was playing in the sand at Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park.  He loved it there.

The sand was very fine and not too hot.  As in many parts of Utah, off highway vehicles (OHV) are allowed in the park.

Making a sand angel.  We found a lot of sand in our bathtub later that night.

We were in Glen Canyon six months ago and did a lot of fun day trips.  This time Cooper simply wanted to play in the pool.

04/04/07

Boating in Lake Powell to Rainbow Bridge National Monument.

Monument Valley

04/06/07

On the way home we decided to see one more site so we headed North on Utah SR-261 from Mexican Hat

to go to Natural Bridges National Monument.  We got on SR-261 and saw a rock face in front of us and

wondered how the road got around the mountain.  We got closer and found that the road simply went up and up.

We hiked to Sipapu Bridge at Natural Bridges National Monument.  The dome of the Capital in Washington could almost

fit under this bridge.  It is 220 feet high and 268 feet across.  The hike took us down below the bridge.

The bridge is 53 feet thick (about a five story building)

Owachomo Bridge is 106 feet high and spans 180 feet.