Touring Utah

Will and I have spent the past 5 days exploring southern Utah and all of its National Parks. We began at Arches National Park where we camped in Devil's Garden for two nights and hiking various trails during the day looking at the crazy rock formations including delicate arch, landscape arch, pine arch, double o's and many more. We then made our way to Dead Horse State Park which is one of the most photographed areas in Utah and where we camped for a night on the top of a canyon. There we hiked  Big Horn trail where we walked along the rim of a canyon to then end where you looked out a rock formation resembling horns. We also looked at Dead Horse View which is what the park is known for. The next morning we went to Canyonlands National Park-Island in the Sky District which was outstanding. It is Utah's version of the Grand Canyon. There we hiked to Mesa arch and Upheavel Dome which were amazing. We then made our way to Grand Escalante Staircase National Monument which we drove along two scenic byways 24 and 12 to get there. Our drive to the monument took us through 60 miles of nothing but outstanding rock formations before entering the town of Torrey, Utah where we jumped on scenic byway 12 which led us through Dixie National Forest and Capital Reef National Park. This road at times was insane. At one point we were driving on a ledge with no guard rails and a 1,000 ft plus drop-off into canyons on both sides! Not to mention the road wound back and forth and had a 14% grade. We then came across Lower Calf Creek Recreation area campground which was along scenic byway 12 in the bottom of a canyon where we pitched a tent for the night. It was pretty cool to go from camping on top a canyon one night to sleeping in the bottom of one the next. This morning we hiked the Lower Calf Creek trail which was  luckily located at our campground.  This hike was a beautiful 3 mile hike along the creek which run through a canyon system and lead to a to a 126 ft waterfall.  It was awesome. This afternoon we are heading to Bryce National Park where we will spend a day before heading to Zion, our last national park in Utah.