TrekPass – Travel Blog

We arrived in Monument Valley at 10 am (a two hour drive from Moab). Monument Valley is famous for the buttes, mesas, canyons, and the free standing rock formations, the tranquility of the land and its wilderness beauty. Also, many movies and commercials were filmed there beginning in 1938 by John Ford. You can either choose a guided tour through the Valley or do one of the self tours with your car which we did. The tour started at the Visitor center, where a 17 mile unpaved loop road winded through the park. Along the way there are 11 scenic stops. The tour was spectacular.

After leaving Monument Valley at 3pm and driving for 2.5 hours, we arrived in the city of Page, which is located near the Lake Powell.

We left Salt Lake City in the morning and arrived in the city of Moab, the starting point to the Arches NP, four hours later. We were ready to explore the NP in the afternoon. The park is popular for its arches, spires, balanced rocks and sandstone fins. Some of the arches are reachable by car and some are accessible through hiking trails. There is a 2 hour hiking trail towards the most famous Delicate Arch and the view from there is breathtaking. Other impressive arches are the Landscape Arch, The Windows, Balanced Rock, Skyline Arch and Broken Arch. It was worthwhile waiting for the sunset (7:23 pm) at the Garden of Eden when the rocks turned their colors into a glimmering red.

Since Salt Lake City served as host to the 2002 Winter Olympics, we were ready to follow the Olympics route. We chose the Alta ski area which counts as one of the largest skiing area around Salt Lake City. The view from the top was breathtaking (the top elevation was 10,550 ft (3216 m)) and the snow conditions superb. We had a great skiing experience and would come back anytime.

 We woke up early today since we wanted to watch the sunrise over Grand Teton at 7:20 am. After breakfast, we took off and drove on the most scenic road to Salt Lake City. We passed European named cities like Geneva, Montpelier and Paris. After four hours being on the road, we made it to our destination, Salt Lake City. We checked out the Temple Square, the center of Mormonism (we found out that 80% of Utah’s population are Mormons!). The Temple and the Tabernacle with its unique acoustics are major draws, as are the surrounding gardens, it is truly amazing. We were immediately approached by Mormon practitioners of the faith when we started taking pictures…let’s just say that we had an interesting conversation.

    After a two hour drive from Idaho Falls to Jackson, we arrived at the Grand Teton National Park. The park is named after Grand Teton (13,770 feet or 4195 m), which is the tallest mountain in the Teton Range. Grand Teton NP is connected to Yellowstone NP which means that most animals travel between both parks.

The park is popular for hiking, fishing, backpacking, skiing, cycling, climbing and much more and you may spot buffalo, moose, pronghorn and elk. All the roads except one are closed during the winter time; however we were still lucky to spot two moose in the valley. These animals are usually hard to find and we were unfortunate when we went moose hunting in Maine and Yellowstone NP before.