Impressions of More US National Parks

Last week I shared about five National Parks I had visited before I started my blog. I didn’t feel I remembered enough to give a lot of detail, but thought I would share some thoughts and experiences about these parks. Today I want to share about five more parks. While last week’s list included parks from Maine to Hawaii, this week the parks are all in the southwestern section of the United States.

Yosemite National Park is a well known park in California. We visited it in 2009 over Memorial Day weekend. My daughter had just graduated from her teaching program in Sacramento so we used this as an opportunity to explore the park. We spent two days there on a a warm weekend.

The views coming into Yosemite were quite beautiful. We had to stop along the road to grab some photos. The first day we spent at the main center of the park where you have views of Yosemite Falls, Half Dome, and other major sites. We didn’t do a very good job of planning our visit so we didn’t always know what the best locations were. There is certainly a lot to see here.

After a long wait getting into Yosemite on our second day, we went to a different part of the park, Mariposa Grove. It turns out holiday weekends are not the best times to visit National Parks. Mariposa Grove is an area of large sequoia trees. We went for a hike among the trees. The landscape was somewhat dry which is different for us north-westerners. We did see some deer as well as the giant trees in the area. We enjoyed our visit and need to go back to revisit some of the sights Yosemite has to offer.

Utah has a number of National Parks, and we decided to take a week and go there in April of 2016. The rookie mistake we made was failing to study the map carefully. We automatically figured that we would fly into Salt Lake City for our trip. However, we planned to visit Zion National Park first. If we had looked carefully, we would have seen that Las Vegas was much closer to Zion. As it was our drive down to Zion was a long car ride from Salt Lake City.

We were going to spend two days in Zion, but the first day was a bust for me. I woke up nauseated and sick and ended up spending most of the day in bed. My wife went ahead and checked out some things on her own. One unusual thing about Zion is that the entrance to the park is on the edge of the town of Springdale. We were able to walk to the entrance of the park from our hotel. Most parks are not very close to a town.

Walking to Zion works because cars were not allowed in while we were there. A shuttle bus takes visitors around to the major sites. It’s pretty much an in and out ride so one can get off anywhere and then continue on or go back. When we went the second day, the line for the shuttle was quite long at the entrance. We decided to walk down a ways to the first stop and wait there.

The park has a number of places to hike and visit. Probably the most popular spot is the slot canyon at the end of the shuttle route. Visitors hike along the river to the canyon which becomes quite narrow. Essentially explorers have to walk in the water to continue deeper into the canyon. We weren’t prepared for that, but walked as far as we could on the path.

I found Zion to be a beautiful park with the red rock cliffs and canyons. The spring green of the trees added a nice contrast. In terms of beauty, Zion is one of my favorite National Parks.

The following day we planned to go to Capital Reef National Park on our way to Arches National Park. However, we awoke to discover it had snowed, and the back roads I had planned to take seemed a little dicey. Since we had a rental car, I didn’t want to take any chances so we skipped Capitol Reef and took the long way around to Moab, the nearest town to Arches National Park.

Arches is a well known National Park and for good reason. There are a number of unique and unusual rock formations here with the red colored stones. While visitors can see many of the formations from viewing spots along the road, it is also possible to hike and get a closer view point.

The well known Delicate Arch is quite a hike to get to. For that we opted to go to a view point and see it from afar. However, we did hike out to a number of locations. My favorite part is actually at the beginning of the drive where there are formations that give the appearance of men. It made me think of the three wise men but is actually called the Three Gossips. The park is certainly a place for photographers as there is something of interest around every corner.

Canyonlands National Park is not far from Arches on the opposite side of the main highway. It is not as well known as Arches, but it has a lot to offer. While Arches is about sculpture-like formations sticking out in the landscape, Canyonlands is just as its name says, about canyons. A road take visitors to a number of view points where one looks out over a large and vast area carved out into canyons.

There were a few places where we found visitors sitting on the edge of cliffs. That would always make us quite nervous. There are a number of hikes one can do here as well. We did a couple of short hikes. Canyonlands was a one day visit for us.

As a photographer, this was a challenging area. The blue haze and purple mountains made the colors hard to get correct in the photos. Hopefully these photos will give you some idea of what the area was like. The last photo from this set is actually from Dead Horse Point State Park. The entrance is close to Canyonlands and is well worth a stop on your way out.

Of course when one talks about canyons, the granddaddy of all canyons has to be considered, the Grand Canyon. I had my first encounter with the Grand Canyon when I was a kid. My grandparents lived in Arizona for a time, and we went down a few times to visit. On one of those visits we stopped by the Grand Canyon. When I say we stopped by, that’s exactly what I remember. We rolled up to the parking area, got out and looked over into the canyon for maybe ten minutes, and then continued our journey.

More recently we visited the Grand Canyon in June 2019. It was a hot day for our visit. There is a large main parking area, and we got out and walked over to the main viewing areas. We ended up with a unique experience as there was a boys choir from the Midwest performing at the edge of the canyon. That was fun to watch and listen to them sing. 2019 was the 100th anniversary of the park so apparently they were having special events such as this from time to time.

While visitors can drive around the part of the canyon nearest to the visitor center, other parts are closed to cars. Like Zion they provide a shuttle service that takes tourists to some of the other view points. We walked between shuttle pick up points for one section, but considering the heat, we were glad for the shuttle.

Of course people do hike down into the canyon, but we were definitely not up for that. That should be done thoughtfully with a lot of preparation.

The best part of the day is the evening. As the sun sets lower in the sky the colors of the rocks begin to change and one can get some great photos. It’s best to get to the main view points early as everyone is out to get their photos at that point. Mornings may be great as well, but I wouldn’t know about that.

There are so many great National Parks to visit in the US, and I haven’t even visited half of them yet. However, in the near future I already have plans to visit four more so stay tuned to see which ones I am able to share about. In the meantime if you have stories to tell of your visits to these five parks, I’d love to hear about them in the comment section below. Don’t forget to sign up to get your personal emailed copy of my blog each Wednesday. Don’t miss a thing.