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Utah: an unexpected gem
Worsening weather here plus cheap flights to LA, what’s a lawyer in need of a midwinter break to do? As Craig Sisterson discovered, there’s much more to the American West than Californian cities and the Grand Canyon.
If I’m being brutally honest, before I first started exploring the United States, if you’d asked me to list the 50 states in order from those I really wanted to visit, to those I didn’t, Utah wouldn’t have fared well. At all. Alphabetically, it comes in at number 44, but it probably would have slid a few spots even further down when it came to preference. After all, what was there to entice me to Utah ahead of the many other attractions elsewhere? Pretty much all I knew about the state was that it was home to Salt Lake City, the Mormon Church, and a good but not great NBA team, and that it was where the ‘Miracle’ US ice hockey team had defeated the Soviets in 1980, and Burt Munro had ridden his World’s Fastest Indian.
But boy was I wrong. Utah unexpectedly ended up on my itinerary as part of a two-week San Francisco to Las Vegas road trip, designed to experience the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and several other national parks and wilderness areas on the way from city to city. I saw Utah as an ‘add-on’, but what I found was a spectacular state, especially for those with a fondness for the outdoors. It’s full of postcard scenery completely unlike anything we have in New Zealand, and is a ‘must do’ destination for those with a passion for hiking, horse riding, or mountain biking. There’s plenty to see and do across the entire state, but you can’t go too far wrong by travelling along the border between Utah and Arizona, dipping back and forth to sample some of the best each south-western state has to offer. Join a tour (the small group adventure tours offered by the likes of Trek America are particularly good), or drive yourself from place to place.
My first experience of Utah was the high plateaus and striking rock towers and mesas of Zion National Park, which boasts some of the most scenic canyon country in the United States. As I was to find out over the coming days, the south-west in general does canyons pretty spectacularly. We’ve all heard of the mighty Grand Canyon, in neighbouring Arizona, of course, but Utah is home to plenty of lesser-known canyons that can be equally memorable and breathtaking in their own way. Zion is part of an impressive geological formation called the Grand Staircase, a series of colourful cliffs stretching from nearby Bryce Canyon down (geographically and geologically) to the Grand Canyon. Full of impressive vistas, one of the most famous views is earned via a strenuous hike up to Angel’s Landing, a towering rock monolith rising several hundred metres into the sky. About a four to five hour round trip, the trail is well maintained, but hikers need to watch their hydration as the sun bakes down, reflecting off the exposed rock. The highlight is the final section; after conquering ‘Walter’s Wiggles’, 21 steep switchbacks rising to a scenic plateau, hikers are faced with scrambling on a narrow trail across the narrow rock isthmus, grasping hand chains to steady themselves. Unlimited views of Zion Canyon in both directions are the reward. Just be careful near the edge (a few hikers have fallen to their deaths).
Less strenuous but equally striking are the hikes through the hoodoos (unusual and colourful rock towers) at Bryce Canyon National Park, around two hours away by car. Viewed from above, the hoodoos make Bryce Canyon look almost like a rocky sea anemone, its multi-hued stone spires stretching towards the sky. As fantastic as the lookout views are, it’s even cooler (literally in terms of the shade) to wander any of the short trails that maze through the hoodoos, which vary in height from human-sized to that of a 10-storey building. You can camp or lodge at Bryce Canyon, but another option is to head less than an hour down the road to overnight at Kodachrome Basin State Park. The park was named after the iconic Kodachrome film that National Geographic used to photograph the unique, beautiful, and varied colours of the rock formations for a feature back in the late 1940s, and Paul Simon immortalised in song.
If all this impressive but sun-drenched rock has you in dire need of a swim, don’t worry, there are rivers and swimming holes in some of the parks. Or you could stop off at Lake Powell. The second-largest, man-made reservoir in the United States, it really just seems like a gigantic lake, stretching as far as the eye can see (300 km in length and up to 40 km wide); a perfect spot to water ski, jet ski, take a boat trip to secluded side canyons, or merely soak up the sun.
Continuing along the Utah-Arizona border another couple of hours, you’ll find some more spectacular and unique rock formations, ones that may look strangely familiar. Monument Valley in the Navajo tribal lands is a photographers’ paradise; its mighty sandstone buttes jutting skywards from the surrounding plains have appeared in several films and TV programmes, from classic John Wayne westerns to Forest Gump and Mission: Impossible II. Take a jeep tour with a Navajo guide, and you’ll get to see and learn about a few extra things off the main track that’s open to the public. For us, this included our guide Jimmy playing his flute and other native instruments in a secluded rock formation, an open cave with a natural chimney. The haunting strains of his flute combined with the spectacular setting to produce a truly unforgettable (and spine-tingling) experience.
There is, of course, much more to sample in Utah, and the south-west states in general, than I discovered in my few days travelling there. But that’s the beauty of it; before I unexpectedly found Utah on my itinerary, I may never have chosen to travel there. But now, I’d have no hesitation in going back. Utah has skyrocketed up my charts.
NZLawyer magazine, issue 140, 9 July 2010
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