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Utah offers a wealth of great outdoors

Photo provided by TONY FABRIZIO

Reporter Tony Fabrizio takes a WaveRunner for a spin in one of Lake Powell's numerous canyons.

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By TONY FABRIZIO

afabrizio@tampatrib.com

Published: November 12, 2009

Updated: 11/13/2009 06:36 pm

The plan for our nine-day vacation was to see everything of Utah's great outdoors worth seeing.

As I quickly learned putting the itinerary together, that isn't possible.

So abundant are the state's natural wonders that, even covering more than 1,300 miles by car, my girlfriend and I couldn't get to two of the five national parks, Arches and Canyonlands.

Monument Valley, with its iconic buttes reaching as high as 1,000 feet, didn't make the cut. Nor, because of the added distance, did the north rim of the Grand Canyon, accessible through southern Utah.

But our trip got us to the stunningly colorful Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon and Zion national parks. We visited two national monuments, which were like parks, and spent two days at incomparable Lake Powell, whose canyons we explored by WaveRunner (it was August - a bit warmer than November).

Our examination of the 45th state stretched from the Wyoming border at the northeast corner to the Nevada border at the southwest corner and into Arizona at the southeast corner, the entry point for Powell.

Along the way, we kayaked the Provo River. We hiked in conditions ranging from light snow to triple-digit temps. We walked the picturesque campus of Brigham Young University, and we snuck into the bobsled track at Utah Olympic Park in Park City.

Most of what we saw and did was carefully plotted, but we also had pleasant surprises. I recommend a quick stop at Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park, featuring salmon-colored shifting dunes surrounded by red sandstone cliffs.

Getting started

The most popular approach for exploring natural Utah is to fly into Las Vegas and stick to the southern part of the state, which has the highest concentration of national parks in the country.

We began at Salt Lake City so we could see a broader range of scenery and minimize our time in desert temperatures. This proved to be the right move, because the high-altitude mountain ranges of the north provided breathtaking backdrops.

Easily the star attractions of our trip were Bryce Canyon and Zion national parks in southwest Utah. We visited them on consecutive days - you don't need more than one day at Bryce or two at Zion - and both were visually astounding.

The parks sit 80 miles apart on the Colorado Plateau, a ruggedly beautiful land 5,000 to 11,000 feet in elevation that also boasts the Grand Canyon and an amazing array of mountains, natural bridges, river gorges and every type of desert landscape.

Bryce - named for Mormon pioneer Ebenezer Bryce, who homesteaded the area in the 1800s - is technically a natural amphitheater. It's most famous for its hoodoos, tall, thin spires of rock that are often top-heavy and seem to defy gravity.

Domed by a deep blue sky and bordered by an emerald green forest, the orange, red and white hoodoos and other fanciful formations rising from the amphitheater walls gave the impression of being on another planet.

We explored Bryce on two hikes within the park and another, to a small waterfall, outside the main gate. The highlight was "the world's greatest three-mile hike," a combination of the Queens Garden Trail and Navajo Loop that descends 550 feet to the canyon floor, passes through a slot canyon and climbs to Sunrise Point.

Zion is considered the more impressive of the two because of its brilliant blend of cliffs, water and vegetation. Yet, because Zion sits at a lower elevation and is explored from the bottom of a canyon rather than the top, it can get very hot there in the summer.

The triple-digit heat we encountered, coupled with having to take shuttle buses from point to point because of the summer crowds, made our visit seem more like a day at Disney than an exploration.

That said, our hike into The Narrows, waist-deep in the Virgin River between towering Navajo sandstone cliffs, and the trail to three separate "emerald pools" were well worth taking.

Advice if you're visiting Zion: Approach it from the east. On Utah 9, you'll descend 2,500 feet on a series of switchbacks and see some of the park's most impressive vistas. You also pass through the remarkably tight Mount Carmel Tunnel, once the longest road tunnel in the United States.

My girlfriend's favorite hike wasn't at Bryce or Zion but at the lesser known and, for our visit, sparsely populated Capital Reef National Park. On the strenuous Chimney Rock trail, we walked for hours without seeing another soul. From the overlooks, we could see for miles.

One of my favorite stops was the 6-mile Calf Creek Falls trail near Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, a 1.9-acre parcel protected because of its extraordinary scenery.

Climbing up and over rocks, through sand and between vegetation, we had to run the trail because of our late starting time. But we were rewarded with a private dusk viewing of the 126-foot falls, which tumble down mineral streaked cliffs.

Easily our nicest surprise was a tentative stop on our itinerary: Cedar Breaks National Monument on the High Plateaus section of the Colorado Plateau. Another natural amphitheater, Cedar Breaks is three miles long and 2,000 feet deep. Because it hasn't been publicized as much as other areas, it provides a break from the crowds.

The rim sits at 10,000 feet and the altitude-thinned air was 50 degrees on our visit. The combination of a light rain, purple wildflowers, orange rock and twisted, petrified-looking trees growing out of white sand gave the place a mystic feel.

Take to the water

We devoted two-plus days to Lake Powell, a 186-mile reservoir on the Utah-Arizona border created by the flooding of Glen Canyon. With brownish-orange to red cliffs resting against sapphire-blue water, it's one of the most photographed lakes anywhere.

Many people explore it by houseboat. We chose something more nimble, renting our WaveRunner off-site (www.powellzone .com). The threat of thunderstorms kept us from venturing too far into the canyons or getting anywhere near the reputedly magnificent Rainbow Natural Bridge, but we saw enough to know we want to go back.

We did the trip on the cheap as much as possible, using hotel points saved up over years and taking advantage of the free breakfast buffet at the Hampton Inns.

Our favorite food stop, hands down, was the Dam Bar & Grill, with its 30-foot tall glass etching of Lake Powell and faux recreation of Glen Canyon Dam. That's in Page, Ariz. Order the quesadillas.

Our final day yielded yet another treasure in the Mirror Lake Scenic Byway. The 47-mile road through northeast Utah climbs to an elevation of 10,687 feet at Bald Mountain Pass, offering spectacular views of the Uinta Mountains.

We encountered light snow at the higher elevations, made snowballs on the 15th day of August.

Olympic Park, the site of multiple events during the 2002 Winter Games, was closed by the time we got there. With a park ranger's (implied) permission, we circumvented a couple of gates to get to the bobsled track.

We left Utah believing it was a plus we didn't get to Arches National Park or highly recommended Goblin Valley State Park or farther up Lake Powell. There's a built-in excuse to go back.

As if we need one.

Reporter Tony Fabrizio covers the Tampa Bay Lightning. He can be reached at (813) 259-7994.

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