We were excited to go back to Utah, do a lot of hiking and enjoy the outdoors for a Christmas vacation. We visited Zion National Park in 2016 in February and really enjoyed the park. We were shocked at the crowds during Christmas, and were glad we only planned two days there, we didn’t even go into the main section of the park because of the crowds! They had the closed the main road, so you had to take the shuttle bus, and on Christmas Day there parking lot at the visitor center was completely full. To escape the crowds we went to the west side of the park on the first day and hiked Taylor Creek and on the second day the east side, where we hiked the Canyon Rim Overlook Trail and the East Rim Trail. They are both small areas with just a few trails, but if you want to get away from the crowds this is where to go, and the scenery is just as beautiful.

Zion National Park

After Zion we headed to Capitol Reef hoping for a quieter experience and that’s exactly what we found. We had four days here so we were able to explore so many great areas of the park.

Freemont River Trail
Panorama Point
Hickman Bridge
Grand Wash
Petroglyphs
Cassidy Arch
Capitol Gorge
Sunset Point
Chimney Rock
Cohab Canyon

I also visited Circle Cliff Alpaca Ranch Alpacas to check out their cute little store and yarn spun from their alpacas.

After visiting Capitol Reef, we have now seen all five of the national parks in Utah (Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, and Zion) and I have to say Capitol Reef is my favorite. The scenery is unrivaled and it was a much quieter park.

Capitol Reef National Park

After researching Grand Staircase we discovered that hiking in Grand Staircase that unless you have a four wheel drive or off-road vehicle we wouldn’t be doing much hiking, so we only hiked one of the few accessible trails, Lower Calf Creek Falls.

Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument

Kodachrome State Park is a hidden gem and is quite close to Grand Staircase, so we were able to fill in our last day in this beautiful park.

Kodachrome State Park

On our drive back to Las Vegas we stopped at Bryce Canyon for a quick visit and hike. The last time we were here in 2015 there was snow and ice on the trails so we weren’t able to do much hiking. This time the trails were clear and we did a hike down into the canyon. Bryce Canyon has the highest elevation of all the parks and we were definitely huffing and puffing on the hike back up the canyon. We were glad we took the time revisit this amazing park, it was definitely worth the stop.