explore utah: part one

This post has been a long time coming, but I wanted to highlight our week in Utah before it slips away forever. Mostly because 90% of you are currently thinking "what's in Utah?" Or at least, that's what 90% of people said when we mentioned we were headed to Utah for vacation.

What's in Utah? Well, this.

And this.

And lots of this.

We actually flew into Denver and immediately hopped in a rental car and headed west on I-70. Nine hours later we found ourselves all the way on the west side of Utah in the (very tiny) town of Panguitch. And right outside of Panguitch is Bryce Canyon National Park, which is were we headed early the next morning.

This trip was designed to be an active one! We created a rough sketch of our days based on the hikes we wanted to explore with plenty of room to change plans on the fly. And active it was - we hiked until we thought our feet just might fall off. Or until our lungs collapsed, but that's not hard when you suddenly find yourself 10,000 feet above sea level.

We hiked the Navajo Loop down into the canyon, and then tied that hike to the Peek-a-Book Loop. Peek-a-Boo is definitely a strenuous hike, but the views are truly beautiful. None of these photos are edited - the rocks are that intense.

As beautiful as Peek-a-Boo was, Navajo Loop definitely won "favorite hike" of the park. This part of the trail is called Wall Street. It's absolutely stunning, and the hike isn't as tough as they make it out to be. Definitely worth the effort.

 At the top of Wall Street

 

 Lone tree growing at the bottom of Wall Street

Check out the hikers at the bottom of the photo below. Hiking through those sheer cliffs is pretty incredible.

And all that in just one day! I promise not to drag out the entire week-long trip this much. But you'll want to check out our post tomorrow about the time we spent 6 hours hiking in a river. Yeah, like IN the river.

Has anybody else been to Utah? Or on another fantastic vacation recently? I'm a travel nut and can't get enough of it!