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Exploring Utah’s Big 5: A Family’s Journey Through the National Parks
20 Plays1 month ago
Natalie returns to share her family's epic adventure through Utah’s Big 5 national parks. From the towering arches to the deep canyons, we talk about the highlights, hidden gems, and what it’s like experiencing these iconic landscapes as a roadschooling family.
You can follow Natalie and her family's journey at Camping Kiddos.com or on Instagram.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Go Far Girl' Podcast
00:00:10
Speaker
Hey there, and welcome to Go Far Girl, the podcast where women share the stories that changed them one journey at a time. I'm your host, Chantel. I'm a travel writer and a lifelong wanderer, and I believe that every mile we travel brings us closer to the strongest, boldest, most authentic versions of ourselves.
00:00:28
Speaker
Each week, I'll sit down with incredible women to talk about the trips that shaped them, the lessons they learned along the way, and the power of going far in every sense of the word. So grab your coffee, your journal, or your carry-on, and let's dive in.
00:01:00
Speaker
All right. All right. Welcome
Natalie's Homeschooling Road Trip
00:01:03
Speaker
back. So in our last episode, we talked with Natalie and she is back with us here today. For those of you you missed last episode, and go back and listen to it. But just to recap, Natalie was a professor, an English professor.
00:01:15
Speaker
She got tired of the living quarter to quarter life, took her kids out of school, moved to the country, and that has been Driving around, teaching her kids on the road ever since. They've been to 21 national parks, I believe.
00:01:28
Speaker
And her kids get the homeschooling, hands-on learning that way as they travel as a family. Over 20,000 miles in the last two years they've done. So that's pretty incredible. So in the last episode, we talked a lot about the route that led her to the decision of being on the road, of giving up her...
00:01:45
Speaker
steady job, things like that. And today I kind of want to talk more about the actual journeys, the destinations themselves.
Exploring Utah's Mighty Five
00:01:53
Speaker
So last year they went on a big trip to the Utah Mighty Five.
00:01:57
Speaker
For those of you that don't know, those are the five national parks in Utah, which are some of the finest in the country. You've got Moab, which has arches and Canyonlands National Park. And then you've got Zion, Bryce Canyon, and the one I always forget, Reefs, Capitol Reefs.
00:02:14
Speaker
Capitol Reefs. So Natalie's going to talk to us more about those, give us her favorite things to do in the parks, why she loves them, why you should go. and I'm going to turn it over to her. and Welcome back. I'm so glad you came back to hang out with us again.
00:02:28
Speaker
Yes, I'm glad to be back to talk about all things Utah National Parks. It's really like a different world out there. It's just so beautiful that even if you've seen pictures, I feel like when I went,
00:02:42
Speaker
I was just like, oh, oh my gosh. And I don't know how many times we said it. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. It's like bars. Oh my gosh. It's just so different. So tell me first off, which is your favorite of the five?
00:02:57
Speaker
I know. Child, isn't it? Right? No, that's easy. I don't know. andset the shits
00:03:05
Speaker
I know it's a cliche answer, but I loved Zion. It was just, it's just so pretty. It's a for a reason. I feel like Capital Reef was my slipper hit of the Zion.
00:03:18
Speaker
I love that. like At Capital Reef, and I'm always, you can drag me at anything with a good sign. So... and Wait, like in the park, I get the little ranger station. Look at the stores. They just have pies. There's this place called the Gifford House, which is part of the Fruita District.
00:03:35
Speaker
And that's where the Mormon pioneers actually settled and then made some incredible things out of this, what seems like would be in a landscape that you could not grow anything.
00:03:46
Speaker
There are still fruit orchards there that you can pick from for free as much as you can eat in the orchards. And then you can buy it and take it home with you, but it's super, super cheap. So when they actually take the fruit from the orchards and make these little pies, which they're probably not single serving. Any pies a single serving? If you want to put a pie. I'm not even hiking. What are you going to do?
00:04:12
Speaker
But yeah, they have these amazing little pies that are for probably two or three people or one if you're me. And they have a bunch of different flavors and you wait in line at the Gifford house and you get your little pies and you sit out in front of it. And it was just so unexpected. Where else can you get a pie in a national park?
00:04:29
Speaker
I don't think anywhere. who I don't know. I'm about to go find out because... That sounds like a delight. And I haven't been to Capitol Reef, so that's, I'm real, that's cool. Yes. Yes. so tell us what you did. You did a road trip. You saw them all on one trip, right?
00:04:45
Speaker
On one trip. Yeah. So we had been to Moab before. When the kids were really little, we went out and we have family that lives out in Colorado. So we had tacked on some extra stuff before going to go see them.
00:04:56
Speaker
And so we had done arches and that was the first time, like you were saying, this place looks like Mars. I want to know more. I want to see more. But because we were, we've both had jobs and we were going to go see family, we had such a limited amount of time that we couldn't see everything I wanted to see. We didn't get to go to Dead Horse Point State Park. We didn't get to go to Canyon. I saw that,
Travel Logistics and Tips for Utah Parks
00:05:18
Speaker
In Arches. And then we were on to Denver was where we were actually heading. And so I said, I am coming back. I want to do all of them. I want to see more of the state. It looks so different than South Carolina.
00:05:30
Speaker
And it just, it rented Headspace for eight years before I did. That's how they get you. but that And so the summer, the road trip we took last summer actually started out as I want to go back to Moab again.
00:05:44
Speaker
I want to do Canyonlands. I want to do Arches. And then it was, if I'm out there, could probably go to Colorado on the way there. And if I'm already in Utah, if we go to Moab, could probably do the rest of the big five.
00:05:58
Speaker
And they have ballooned into this. We want to go to Craters of the Moon in Idaho. That's close to Glacier National Park, which is close to Badlands. So we ended up all this just magnificent, incredible to my road trip through the West. So and that yeah, they got me. That Moab like just reeled me in and it exploded from there. Yeah.
00:06:17
Speaker
So let's take park by park and how you suggest someone does a is it a circle? If someone's not doing, if someone doesn't have the time to do a huge big one, but they still want to see all five. So let's go where are you would start about how many days you think each park needs. I know you could do a billion days in each park, but really just to get those really super aha moments and important things. What would you, if you were to get design a trip for me, what would you do?
00:06:43
Speaker
So I, since we were on a much longer trip, I know that we had flexibility that a lot of people don't necessarily have. It's also part of a much longer trip. We were coming in and we did it in a way that I wouldn't recommend the normal person do it because we were coming in from Colorado. And so I guess if you wanted to drive in from Denver, but that's a long way.
00:07:06
Speaker
Again, if you have limited vacation days, I would actually fly into Las Vegas, which is way closer to that little southwestern section of Utah. Fly into Las Vegas, skirt the little corner there, go up, do Zion and, or as they say, Zion, which I was corrected several times with my southern accent, is not Zion.
00:07:27
Speaker
Zion. We do Royon and then Bryce Canyon, which are fairly close together, and then go up through Capitol Reef and then around and do Moab and then Arches and Canyonlands. And then you would have kind of long drive on the way back, but you could even hook through like Monument Valley on the way back, do Grand Canyon, and you'd make a big...
00:07:48
Speaker
loop but that's me that way. Yeah. It would be a lot to do. I think I've even had people reach out to me on my blog because I've written a big post about our experience and seeing all five of them with the kids and everything. And I've had people ask me, how fast can I do these? Because I recommend on the blog about 10, 11 days, which I know is probably at the max for most people's vacation time.
00:08:11
Speaker
And even that is going to feel like a trial because we can't almost five weeks there. And I feel like we still had to make really difficult decisions about what we were seeing and how long we were spending it at each place. So unlimited days would be my recommended amount of time. and you go I know that's not feasible, but I would say that if you could give each park at least two days, then you can go in do at least a good hike or two, then you can still go like in Zion. It's almost impossible to go there and not want to go hang out in Springdale little bit because they've got so many cute little shops and restaurants and things like that.
00:08:52
Speaker
Highly recommend e-biking in Zion. That was something that we did while were there. You get to skip all the shuttle crowds. You don't have to worry about parking. So we just rented e-bikes, went in and just got to play around in the park the whole time. amazing.
00:09:07
Speaker
awesome um They even had ones we found that had like, we put, my dad was with me for that part of the trip. And so he rented one and I rented one. He carried my 10 year old, she was then 10 and I carried my then seven year old. and they had these little like benches on the back. and We strapped coolers and backpacks back there. So. You're like a petty snab. You're just like, yeah. five dollars I'll take you. take it now im so But that's unique. You can see that in a lot of parks where you could just rent that and do that. That's amazing.
00:09:36
Speaker
And they have tons of bike paths, the main scenic corridor that goes down to a Temple of Cinewaba and the Narrows and everything. All of that is closed to traffic anytime the shuttles are running, which is most of the time because Zion's so popular.
00:09:50
Speaker
You do have to see a shuttle coming behind you. You do have to pull over
Unique Experiences in Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef
00:09:54
Speaker
just for their safety and yours. But for the most part, you just go and you've got your We would see other people on e-bikes and stuff like that, but it was so few people were out there doing it. It was like you had to park to yourself when you were on the road, just enjoying the canyons. We saw the endangered California condors while we were out there. it was just, so it was so cool.
00:10:16
Speaker
It's such a cool idea to see it park. Yeah. Gliding's a big park. So I imagine, yeah, that the less traffic, anybody can avoid that traffic and those backups is going to give you a benefit because then you can see more. Right. And it's a balance between me being real and wanting to do total budget travel because at my heart, I am a budget traveler, but also time is money and I don't have time to sit there and tell the kids it's only going to be another hour till the shuttle picks us up as they're all tired and hot and upset and everything. So we made the choice to spend a little...
00:10:49
Speaker
Did you have to book the bikes in advance? you have to rent them ahead of time or can you show up? we We just, we flew by the seat of our pants. I knew this was a thing you could do.
00:10:59
Speaker
And so I went and i told to, I believe it was Greater Zion eBikes, which not an affiliate, just rented it like any other person. They helped me out. They had a bunch of different bikes, ones with baby seats and the ones with the benches that we ended up getting. And they but they were very helpful. So yeah, I mean, at high peak,
00:11:18
Speaker
peak season i don't know that i would chance it but we were going in the older season so there were some people there but it's not like i've seen lines and lines where people are just waiting for hours for the shuttles and stuff so it wasn't like that while we were there but yeah e-biking through zion i feel is the cheat code for that for working on I love that.
00:11:42
Speaker
Okay. So let's move to, oh wait, Zion. So where do you stay? If you have a camper or if you don't, what's like the town that you're basing yourself out of for Zion? Yes, so Zion actually has, the National Park has two campgrounds within
Adventures in Moab and Canyonlands
00:11:58
Speaker
Watchmen is the only one that you can actually stay in right now because the South Campground has been just raised to the ground. They're rebuilding it. There's nothing there. It's just ah just a dirt lot right now.
00:12:09
Speaker
So it'll be a while before that one gets rebuilt. We looked at staying in Watchmen inside the the National Park But i ended up choosing not to just because I am traveling with little kids. They like to have a pool. They like to have the amenities, playgrounds, which the National Park campgrounds don't. They just are serving a different group than my kids. So we ended up staying at Zion Canyon Camp Brown and RV Park.
00:12:36
Speaker
which is so close to Watchmen that it's on, Watchmen campground in the park. Here's Zion Canyon campground. It's on either side of the Virgin River. Like you can walk across the river and actually run to the park that way.
00:12:49
Speaker
So we biked or we walked into the Zion National Park via the pedestrian entrance, which was less than a quarter mile from our campground. So I loved it. Best showers that we found on the entire trip were at this campground.
00:13:03
Speaker
So it was like... spa, because we have a back camper, but it is so small as to make you challenge, do I actually need to wash my hair tonight?
00:13:14
Speaker
Is it really that serious? We try to avoid using it unless the kids are just absolutely filthy. And even then we have an outdoor shower that will hose them down in rather than using the indoor shower. Cause it's just, it's so small.
00:13:27
Speaker
It's so small. Yeah. Yeah, that's funny. We just love that campground. It has amazing views of all like the big cliffs that are outside Zion. Great pool. it felt like summer camp. They had lots of activities, a s'mores pit. We just had, we had a break.
00:13:43
Speaker
So the next is Bryce. And is that close enough where you could stay in one location and then just drive to Bryce and come back? Or would you move on? ah So I would probably, just for my own personal travel ethos, would probably move on.
00:13:59
Speaker
But they are close enough that if you got up really early, you could have a full day in Bryce Canyon and then drive back. because I believe they're only about 90 miles apart. You'll have to check...
00:14:12
Speaker
line on that. We ended up, there is a way to go from Zion up to Bryce, but you have to go through the Zion Mount Carmel tunnel, which was made in want to say the late 1920s and our, we just have a Ford F-150. So it's a larger truck, but it's not like the largest truck that you can get.
00:14:33
Speaker
And just driving through there without the camper, I felt like I was hitting every wall, the ceiling, every other core that was going through there. So you can take your camper, but if your camper is over a certain length and height, which mine is on the cusp. I have a little camper, but it's still fairly tall.
00:14:51
Speaker
You have to get the rain. You have call ahead. have to tell the rangers to stop the traffic in both directions. Oh, my God. drive down the middle because you can't go on the side because it's it's like this it's slumped on the side so the camper would rub up again and i just wasn't i just didn't want to deal with all that so we went around the long way to get to bryce canyon rather than go through the shorter way which is the more scenic way just because i had too much other things going on. I couldn't call a ranger to arrange transports. No, that sounds terrible.
00:15:23
Speaker
But there were people that did it. When we were driving back and forth through the tunnel, doing different heights in different parts of the park, we actually saw campers pulled over, waiting for the moment that the rangers were going to stop traffic for the campers on either end of the tunnel. Interesting. Yeah. It's a mile, like 1.1 miles.
00:15:41
Speaker
And there, it is just, it is very small. you can tell that back in the day in the 1920s, they were not expecting a Ford F-150 to ride over there.
00:15:52
Speaker
i mean boy yeah Oh my gosh. hey What was your favorite thing about Bryce? So Bryce, the hoodoos truly look like something off of Mars. I have to say in all of the traveling that I've done, both here and a abroad, I have never seen anything like the amphitheaters with all the hoodoos and they're just cascade down.
00:16:15
Speaker
As I mentioned, i think in the last episode, my kids are really into history, particularly they are really interested in Native American history. And so they were delighted to find out that there's a section that actually the Native people there called the silent city because they believe that the trickster actually froze the original people who live there and that's what the hoodoos actually are so to this day whenever we look at the pictures my kids are like oh look at the silent city there the people are just waiting to come back to life i don't know we just love integrating that kind of yeah so
Future Plans and Community Invitation
00:16:50
Speaker
second there's creativity and all that um it really that whole the hoodoo situation captured my kids
00:16:58
Speaker
imagination. We walked the rim trail. We actually rented bikes there and we rode the rim trail and there's a multi-use trail and they kept, they wanted to stop at every overlook. I didn't think they were going to be that into it because there are some differences in the overlooks, but like not that much. And I would think a seven-year-old would say, hey, we just stopped five minutes ago. Let's stop again and look at this other slightly different perspective. But It was Bryce Canyon was startling in terms of just the geology that's there and all the forces that had to come together in order to make the hoodoos what they are today.
00:17:33
Speaker
So yeah, that was not what I was expecting. Cause like I said, I, this was the first time I'd ever been to Bryce Canyon and it's not a Canyon. It's amphitheaters and you're up at the top kind of looking down and all the hikes go down into the amphitheater.
00:17:46
Speaker
Which you also have to be careful about. We try to bite off more than we can chew all the time.
00:17:53
Speaker
Charleston essentially which is just as flat as can be some in some places we are below sea level and then going to a place like that which I believe it goes up to about 8,800 feet above sea level is just we have to really be careful about some of the heights we go on because those was about The lack of oxygen to our poor low country bodies is just... And so I felt at Rocky Mountain, I was like, I might die here, but it's going to be really pretty.
00:18:18
Speaker
Exactly. At least I'm going to out doing what I love. Oh, it's crazy how much it affects you though because you don't think about it. And it is. It's so significant. It's hard. Yeah. creeping up over the time period that we did ah because Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef are much higher, Bryce Canyon being even higher than Capitol Reef is compared to some of the other parts of Utah.
00:18:39
Speaker
It was, we got up, they were like, oh gosh, it shouldn't be wearing out as much as it does. We hiked all time. We're still just totally out of breath there because of elevation, but it was worth it. It was so pretty. We we loved our time Bryce Canyon.
00:18:55
Speaker
And there's so much to do around there too. Kodachrome Basin State Park. I don't know if you've ever been there. It is one of those places that... You know, it's off the beaten track. It's in Cannonville, which is maybe 20-ish minutes from the park.
00:19:09
Speaker
But, like, it is just so pretty. They had archery for the kids to do. and we got to shoot, of like, this pretend jackalope. And they had little baby archery sets for the kids. And they had a little little dinosaur dig where they got to dig for different, like, little semi-precious gems and stuff. they got to keep those for free.
00:19:26
Speaker
They had nature special. It was really fun. So that was one of the things we did there. We went and we did an ATV rental through the Dixie National Forest, which butts up against bar Brace Canyon.
00:19:38
Speaker
That was so much fun. There was nobody out there. We got to see these prairie dogs and we got to see bristlecone pines that were a thousand years old. And there's also Panwich, I think I'm saying that, which is this little old west town.
00:19:50
Speaker
And we went and we had burgers there and went an antique store that's in, think, the old fire station. We just, there's so much to do There's nothing around the area, but right there, right around Bryce Canyon and Bryce Canyon City, we spent almost a week there.
00:20:08
Speaker
I still feel like there was stuff that I was saying, I really wish we had another day or two here. i really wish we had time to do this. So if I'd had to expand our time anywhere, I think it would have been, well, in all of them, but probably I would have added it another day in the Bryce Canyon area. um And then another day, actually, Capitol Reef. So those were two that kind of surprised me with the amount of stuff that was there to do, despite both of them being really remote individually. I think you bring up a good point that I've learned, and I don't think a lot of people think about it. And this is really important, like at parks, at Glacier, places that get really busy like that, the national forests that are...
00:20:53
Speaker
literally the exact same spot as a national park. you just You can do hikes without as many people. You can bring your dog on a hike where you can't sometimes in the park, all these things. And the river is still the same river that runs through the parks. It's just over here.
00:21:08
Speaker
And there are so many other opportunities and the state parks, especially Utah has so many great state parks as around those, you really get less crowds, less people.
00:21:19
Speaker
structure sometimes, less built up tourism places. And you really get to see a lot of great cool things. And so I think that's such a good point that other people should think about when you are, especially at these busy parks.
00:21:31
Speaker
Maybe you can't get a permit to go up a certain road or you can't get into a certain hike, but you can go up the road a mile and a half and have an epic experience. It's going to be just pretty.
00:21:42
Speaker
And so I'm glad to brought that up because I think that's so important. Yeah. You don't get a little like National Park stamp, but if, and I say this as a collector of the National Park stamp, sometimes that's not what really matters. is Just going out in the spirit area and seeing it to the fullest is worth not getting the stamp or getting the stamp and doing And then going. Yeah.
00:22:05
Speaker
Exactly. So let's talk about Capitol Reef. Right. I don't think a lot of people know a lot about that one. Yeah, so is i believe it and Canyonlands are at the bottom for the number of people who visit. I forget which one. I want to say it's Canyonlands. I think it is Canyonlands. Yeah.
00:22:23
Speaker
There must be Capitol Reef is like number four, but there were so few people that were there while we were there that we only found one area where there were they all any parking woes, which I know there's a lot of parking woes in Zion and Arches and all of the other ones, but Capitol Reef, the only time that we had any issues where we had to make the loop around the parking lot was at Hickman Natural Bridge.
00:22:50
Speaker
which we it was a fantastic hike. It also shares trailhead with two much longer hikes that are in the area. So the turnover is not as quick as you would think it would be if you're just going for Hickman Natural Bridge, which is less than $2.
00:23:06
Speaker
oh So you look and you're like, why are these people, what are they doing on this trail? It's because they're on the nine mile version that goes away. Yeah, it's all day. yeah Exactly. You have to be patient. And we actually went past that one, ended up doing a different hike and then came back a different day and were able to find a spot for Hickman Natural Bridge. So as with any of the parks,
00:23:28
Speaker
Be flexible. If it doesn't, you don't hit it the first time. If you have time on your schedule, lube back. Like you can sometimes get really lucky and you pull right in and there's a spot right there at the trailhead and you can pop out and be on the trail in two minutes. So maybe you're lucky. I'm not always lucky, but we try and you want to get to the parking.
00:23:46
Speaker
yeah Exactly. Exactly. So there's the Capitol Reef. It's funny because it's divided in half by a state road. So when we came in, we were like I said, we were doing the perks in the reverse order of what I would actually recommend people doing.
00:24:03
Speaker
We were coming down from Moab. off of 70 and came through hanksville and that whole stretch is amazing it is so remote and it's it truly does feel like you're driving if there was a road on mars it would look like this just out in the middle of nowhere signs saying please fill up there's nothing for another 70 miles or 100 miles and they're going please camper tires Please do what you're supposed to do.
00:24:29
Speaker
Please, truck. Don't do anything weird. and But if you could get over that anxiety, and the scenery is absolutely epic. So we came down, like I said, from Moab through that whole area, through Hangsville, and ended up, we didn't realize we were in the park until I passed the visitor center because there's no entrance station because it is a public, a two-lane public road.
00:24:53
Speaker
And technically, if you're driving through and you're stopping, you're supposed to have your America the Beautiful pass or pre-borrow pass to have that if a ranger ever asks. There is no cell service in most of the parks. they tell people to take ah like a screenshot and put it in their phone photos because you pulling it up and showing your ranger, it's never gonna happen. They're gonna charge you. I don't know what happens if they find you and you haven't paid the pass.
00:25:21
Speaker
I don't know. I'm a rules follower. I had my America Beautiful past, like hanging on my dashboard. Do you not see here? I'm up above board. I've done all this. So you come through and there's that, so you can just drive through and you can see these beautiful cliffs that are, and but they're more, whereas yeah i Zion is more of oranges and the reds. Capitol Reef is more blonde. The rock's there, so it feels cooler, whereas like Zion just feels cool.
00:25:52
Speaker
don't know, zazzy with the red and the orange and everything. But it's also because there are several rivers that flow through what otherwise looks like a desert environment. There's a lot of greenery at the bottom of these cliffs.
00:26:06
Speaker
And a lot of that is thanks to the Mormon pioneers who came and settled there in the late 1800s and really just eked out this existence difficultly, it seems. And they had people there going to the one-room schoolhouse until the end of World War II, I believe, 1945. No kidding.
00:26:25
Speaker
Yeah, it's it is so cool because you can actually, like I said, go to the Fruita District, which is where the pies are, and you can see... there's There's an old, there's the Gifford house, which used to be one of the houses.
00:26:36
Speaker
There's an old barn, which is the really iconic one. If you've ever seen a photo of Capitol Reef, it's the barn and there's a little road running past it with the cliffs in the background. you can go see that. And then there's a place, like ah I guess like an equipment shed where you can see all the old farm equipment and then all of the fruit orchards that you can go into.
00:26:56
Speaker
And so it's there's a and there's also a one room schoolhouse that you can't go in, but you can peek in the windows and they have little placards and stuff outside that you can go visit. And so you really get this idea of really how hardy these people had to be, first of all, to even think about, oh, I'm going to cultivate this land that is nothing but rocks and cliffs and dirt.
00:27:18
Speaker
And they turned it into, you can still go eat the fruit there today, which is really cool. So I liked that juxtaposition that it imparts of the part, it feels very desert-like, but then you go down into Fruta and they're fruit orchards and there's greenery and there's little deer eating the grass while you're having a picnic. So it's it's ah it's really unique. It doesn't feel like the other parks at all.
00:27:46
Speaker
But it's out in the middle of nowhere, so nobody goes to see it, which is really sad. and That's crazy. So then you go down to my lab. And then in Moab, you can visit Canyonlands, Arches, and Dead Horse State Park, correct?
00:28:04
Speaker
It's all based right out of there. i was surprised when I went to Arches. It's not a very big part. Archies, it's not really very big. And I, what I do love about arches is you could hike everywhere and it's so amazing to get up close to these amazing arches and things like that.
00:28:21
Speaker
But if you can't hike, the road is great too. You can really see a lot of the cool arches and viewpoints and down into the fiery furnace and all of that from your car. Yeah.
00:28:34
Speaker
So if you can't get out and do those hikes, they can still get that opportunity to check those things out. But if you can hike, you should hike because yes, always. So it's like you have no idea how big they are until you're just standing there and you're just, it's just amazing. Yeah.
00:28:55
Speaker
Yeah, and to think that that exists, like naturally. And still, and why, and what is happening, and why is it still there? It's just so crazy. You can always see, oh, this one fell or whatever, but some of those are just...
00:29:10
Speaker
Even delicate arch, it gets so narrow in certain parts that I can't imagine why it's just chilling. It's just hanging out. It's still just hanging out there and probably will be for millions of years. And it's just happened so slowly. But yeah, they do have that sense of just being so delicate in terms of delicate arch. But some of them just, they, and we went and hiked out to broken arch. And even though it's called broken, like you can tell at one point somewhere along the way,
00:29:37
Speaker
that part of the art sort of fell onto the other one, but it's still holding its weight. Yeah. like I have a picture of them standing underneath it, and that was not the reality of the situation, because they're smiling at the photo, but directly before and directly after, they were both just in sheer terror that they was going to fall in the living. I'm like, y'all live on. It's like for tens of thousands of years.
00:29:58
Speaker
Today is probably not. What are the odds? it it workss Exactly. But yeah, they loved Broken Arch despite the terror. They liked standing back and looking at it.
00:30:08
Speaker
And then Sand Dune Arch was. I was just going to ask if you did that one. My boy loved Sand Dune. Yeah. It's just a giant sand pit. i And it's cool in the middle of the day, even though it's really hot outside.
00:30:21
Speaker
And so we went there on this last trip. We went three different times. And they loved it so much that Sand Dune Arch became the like the carrot of, hey, if you're really good, we'll go back to Sand Dune Arch tonight before dinner. they yes They just kept asking, can we please go back? Can we please go back? And we would just go. And I would just yeah sit in the sand, which was cool. And just, we were covered.
00:30:46
Speaker
covered in sand every time but man they had a blast yeah that your boy's favorite too i love that yeah and we even had a pool at the campground that we stayed at in a playground and they just wanted giant natural sandbox and sand dunes that's amazing did you like canyon lands how did you feel about that Canyonlands, it was, i did, I enjoyed it is the short answer. The long answer is that it is so big as to be overwhelming.
00:31:17
Speaker
And hard. Yeah. And to figure out in this gigantically vast landscape, what am I willing to do with my kids out here in the middle of nowhere?
00:31:30
Speaker
two, how can I accurately... in any way kind of experience this because you have three different districts. One of the maze I have never been to because it is so, we actually passed the entrance to it on the way from Moab around as we were headed to Hanksville. Like it was that far to get to the other side of the f***ing lands.
00:31:54
Speaker
But then the needles and the island in the sky, Even those what, an hour and 15 minutes apart? And it's still, they're still right there. As the crow flies, they're not that far apart. But because there's no bridges over any of the rivers in the park, you have to go way around to each one of them.
00:32:14
Speaker
So I, that was one of the places that I thought if I come back and it's nice and cool and we're all like in hiking, like we could just knock ourselves out in terms of seeing this place.
00:32:26
Speaker
It is amazing that we have Canyonlands and that much area has been protected and put aside just for recreation. But at the same time, it can be intimidating for a first time visitor would be like, where do I start with this whole thing? Yeah.
00:32:42
Speaker
I love Canyons though, watching the layers of the rocks and all god the colors, how they change. And ranger was telling us this is prehistoric. This is in all the layers of the different ages. And so it was neat to be able to date those and watch it change as the colors changed on the canyons. And that was pretty fun to learn about. Yeah. different yeah Yeah, I think if I could ever crack canyon lines, really go just spend three or four weeks going to as much of it as I possibly could. I think that could easily be my favorite part because there just feels like there's so much there that you just can't really do in five to seven days of doing that. It's not a drive-through like Arches. You'll have to get down and dirty and get into it. to Yeah. Yeah.
00:33:31
Speaker
like that because it wasn't very busy when we went. And you know, because it's not a drive through, like you said, you really are forced to get out and say, okay, how am I going to experience this? How am I going to place myself into this and make my experience matter past Oh, look, there was the Green River Overlook. I think we passed the sign.
00:33:53
Speaker
Yeah. ah With it, it's very much an active park as opposed to something that's more passive. Like you could go to Yellowstone. I don't recommend it and just passively drive around for a couple of days on the big loops that they've got there.
00:34:07
Speaker
and you would still see animals and you would still see maybe a geyser or something, but all the parks are better when they're active. But yeah, you can't just keep casually going through canyon. let's do We have to go in with a plan, think.
00:34:20
Speaker
no we only went to one district, just to Isle in the Sky. And I was like, oh my gosh, like even just going to one, like you said, i didn't touch that thing. I have no idea, you know, what else there is because it was just so much.
00:34:33
Speaker
And when we went on our, not this past road trip, but the first time I went to Moab when my kids were very small, as I mentioned before, we had a really limited amount of time. So we only had a, we had a five month old. My son was only five months old at the time.
00:34:47
Speaker
So we were kind of limited with both time and what we were willing to do with him being so little. And he and I have the complexion of vampires. And we were there in late May and we were like, oh God, going to burn this baby. We need to be very careful. Yeah.
00:35:00
Speaker
Very little hiking on that that first exposure to Moab and Arches and didn't even bother with Canyonlands because being five months postpartum, I barely knew what state I was in at that point, much less was able to tackle something as large, intimidating as Canyonlands. So that was one of those that was at the top of my list that if I come back And I don't have a baby with me.
00:35:24
Speaker
I'm going to try and get some sort of hold on this massive park. So I can't say that I've conquered it, but we at least got there and we tried to immerse ourselves in it as much as we could. But it's really pretty. It is a beautiful park and it makes you feel just and so small in the best way, though.
00:35:44
Speaker
We were there, there was a thunder and lightning storm. So we were out walking around. We were like, oh, I don't know about this, but it made it so beautiful too because it was dark and moody and then the rocks and the, oh gosh, it was just so cool. But I was a little frightening once the lightning started. We were like, nowhere to go. Like what are we supposed to do? There's no shade. There's no buildings. There's no cell. There's nothing to find.
00:36:11
Speaker
and Yeah, because the island of this pie, feel like you are just on the top. You are the highest point. Anyway, just begging for it. don't know.
00:36:21
Speaker
Okay, I'm writing. You're writing. I'm just going, you know. Yeah. I'm definitely ready to go back, though, because I haven't been to the other three. And i really need to try pie and an e-bike to run off the pie.
00:36:34
Speaker
So yeah it's amazing. Do you have any national parks that are on your bucket list that like, what's your number one like park you haven't done yet, but you really want to do? So I really want to do the Pacific Northwest part. We tried to do that this year and my kids are super into dance right now.
00:36:55
Speaker
And so we're up against their recital, which is in mid-May. And then we've got dance camps and stuff that that start in mid-July. And so I've got this really small window and just getting out there with the camper was going to take me longer than I wanted to.
00:37:10
Speaker
And then it wasn't the flexibility to actually see all the perks that are out there, which want to do them justice. So we looked, how can I do that? Can we fly out, which is so much more expensive. And of course, you'd have to rent a car and then you're limited by the number of days you have with the car.
00:37:28
Speaker
So we just, I put that on the shelf, but it's yeah the shelf right here. It's not going far. So work at that. The next one I'm hoping that region is the part that I hope and we explore in the U.S. You'll have to let me know so I can do a hike with you because that would be so much fun. yeah Those are my parks and I could, yeah. they're Right. I need some. You got it.
00:37:48
Speaker
it's yeah yeah you got it Thank you for sharing all of that. It was so fun talking to you and so like motivating. I really, my husband's never been see Utah or to those parts. oh And so it's always one of those things, the boys and I went with my sister, but he hasn't been. And so I'm always like, God, we got to get you out there.
00:38:08
Speaker
And so we're i listening to you, I'm like, oh yeah, when he hears this, I'm definitely going to have to book a trip because he's like, no, we're doing all of that. So yeah. So byker and pre yeah, for anyone listening, if you guys want more information about the Utah Big Five or national parks, be sure and check out Natalie's blog because she's got all the tips and all the itinerary stuff written up there. You can reach out to her through that. And that's campingkiddos.com.
00:38:32
Speaker
And you can find her on Instagram as well. And you can follow us at GoFarGirl and she can be hanging out in there and answer any questions you guys have too.
00:38:43
Speaker
So it was so good talking to you and appreciate you so much. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.
00:39:03
Speaker
Thanks so much for listening to Go Far Girl. If this episode made you smile, dream a little bigger, but realize it's never too late to book the trip, I'd be so grateful if you'd share it with a friend.
00:39:14
Speaker
And hey, we've got an amazing group of women waiting for you inside our Facebook community. Just search Go Far Girl. Come on in and say hi. Until next time, keep exploring, keep growing, and never stop going far.