Grab your gloves and snow boots, it’s time for an adventure in a frozen wonderland—right in your own backyard! Here are fun twists on classic winter pastimes, like sledding and making snowmen. Learn how to design your own backyard winter Olympics.
Historic Camp Floyd hosts ghost hunts three weekends a year in October, opening their hundred-year-old inn, museum, and cemetery to prying eyes and cameras. The night started off with instructions on how to spot the ghosts; then the lights were extinguished and off we went to find the spooky specters.
Escalante Petrified Forest State Park sits on the edge of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument next to a large reservoir and surrounded by a petrified forest at least a million years old. The peaceful campground (with showers) is the perfect base camp to visit the hundreds of surrounding slot canyons. Within a few hours drive is, not only the monument but Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef National Park. This area is still largely ignored by the tourist hoards.
There are waterfalls worth hiking to and there are falls worth driving four hours, hiking through deep sand, and dodging flying caterpillars to get to. Lower Calf Creek is one of these. The only maintained trail and campground in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, this trail is already worthwhile before you even get out of your car; the country is that jaw dropping.
Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is a 1.9 million-acre secret in southern Utah. Not quite sure how it’s remained so hidden but I’ve lived in Utah my entire life and barely knew about it. But within its vast borders are more slot canyons than you can swing a cat at. It has replaced Zion as my new favorite red rock area. Continue reading “Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument”
Antelope Island, the largest island in the Great Salt Lake, proved to be a fun surprise in my park quest. No, it didn’t smell; yes, it was full of bugs but not as bad as you’d expect. There were also a few buffalo herds, great hiking and biking trails, and yes, even antelope.
Anasazi State Park is a little tiny spec of a park between Capitol Reef and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Dwarfed by its more impressive neighbors, it offers a brief view into the ancient peoples who settled here and visitors can enjoy respite from the sun in a picnic area under the trees.
Fremont State Park, just off I-70, is a terrific jumping off point for hundreds of miles of ATV trails, an Indian museum, and home to several petroglyphs. Also, the place where I rolled a four-wheeler over my leg but we don’t talk about that.
Twenty miles and three thousand feet beyond the crowds and lines of Bryce Canyon, lies Kodachrome State Park. Hidden by three walls with several hoodoos standing as sentinels, this little park is little known and little visited. I stayed at this gem one lonely weekend in late October. When people heard I was camping in Kodachrome, their response was, “Where?”
