To get to arches from where i live is a loooong way. Its the national park in utah that is further away from me than the other 4. So i have devised a plan to get there, in an attempt at visiting arches why not go thru all the other ones in the way there?? So far I’ve only been to zion, which is 8 hours from here but i made it there and back in 3 days so its no soooo tiring to drive. They’re all unique and different from each other and i would devote a whole day at exploring each single park so it would go like this:
Day 1: Drive to Valley of Fire state park in Nevada, 5 to 6 hours from here, one hour after Las Vegas. Very pretty sandstone formations just like the rest of southern Utah. Camp here and explore.
Day 2: Drive to Zion National Park, 3 hours from valley of fire. The first national park to be encountered in Utah and i’ve been there twice already but it would still be awesome to see again. Camp here and explore other places.
Day 3: Drive to Bryce Canyon National Park, probably 2-3 hours from zion. Camp and explore.
Day 4: Drive to Capitol Reef National Park, probably 3-4 hours from bryce. Camp and explore.
Day 5: Drive to Canyonlands National Park, probably 3-4 hours from capitol. Camp and explore.
Day 6: Drive to and finally get to Arches National Park. 1 hour from canyonlands. Camp and explore.
Now the drive back we would have to divide it into 2 days, because now we’re 741 miles and 11 hours from home (according to mapquest that would be the fastest route). So there would be a:
Day 7: Drive approximately halfway (370 miles) for 6 or so hours. According to mapquest that would be the area between zion and valley of fire so we would have to make a pick based on popular votes on where to camp, because there is really nothing except for a couple of whore of a towns in that area (northwestern corner of Arizona).
Day 8: Drive the rest of the way home, 6 to 8 hours away.
Day 9: Rest day
So pretty much the trip would run from a saturday until the sunday of the weekend after. I’d also have to run a mock budget because thats a shitton of money. On the zion trip alone we probably spent at least $500, half of that going into feeding my car with gasoline. This trip would be just over 1600 miles total, while the zion trip was just under 1000 miles. Holy shit i can’t wait to go on this trip!! =)
