Capital Reef, Zion, Bryce question - RV-Dreams Community Forum

Hdrider · RV-Dreams Family Member

Capital Reef, Zion, Bryce question

Howard · Host

Depends on what you mean by "experience". It also depends on how much hiking you want to do and at what level.

Bryce is gorgeous but will require the least amount of time, maybe two to five days.

Zion has incredible variety and fantastic hiking. If you just want to drive through the park and take the shuttle into Zion Canyon and visit the highlights, then you can knock it out in a few days. But, if you're up for some hiking, I'd give it a week or two.

Capitol Reef would fall somewhere in between.

The National Parks in Utah are awesome!!

George Fin · RV-Dreams Community Member

I agree with Howard. Last year we spent 16 days in Bryce and Zion and did not feel as if we did everything. However, we did take some zero days.

soos · RV-Dreams Family Member

We spent at least a week in each but we hike a lot. Zion is one of my favorites and the town is cute too. You can park the rig and take the shuttle into the park.
IMO capital reef is great for hikers but others may lose interest pretty quick.

FOSJ · RV-Dreams Family Member

Capitol Reef was a suprise to us. We only had a few days there but with the jeep we had a great time. Plan to go back. This park was much less crowded than the others.

Hdrider · RV-Dreams Family Member

Thanks for the info, We are not the extreme hikers but we like to hit most trails that are rated up to the moderate levels and are usually no more than 5 miles and will do maybe 2 trails a day if there are a lot to do.
We like taking in the views but won't normally stand at a viewpoint for an hour or anything close. And we will usually break up hiking days with driving tour days. For example we have hiked 2 solid days in Arches so far and did one driving tour day of just viewpoints & visitor center and figure we still have 1 more day of hiking and one sunset drive yet. So we like to do more than buy a tee-shirt and just say we have been there LOL!!
And we agree Howard, the National Parks in Utah are top notch. We plan to spend the entire month of Sept. and probably a week of Oct. touring the state and will probably still need to come back.

Terry and Jo · RV-Dreams Family Member

I haven't been there yet, but I've heard good things about Cedar Breaks National Monument. It is Southwest of the "major" national parks in Southern Utah.

Cedar Breaks National Monument

When Jo and I finally get to travel, we've planning on staying in one place anywhere from one month to six months to check out everything in that "area." With all that Utah has in the way of national parks and monuments and national forests, I suspect we'll be in that state for a long time.

Check with "native" residents for others. While we were in Idaho a month or two ago, the ladies were doing a lot of sewing and embroidery, so the wife's cousin and I drove around to some "local" sites. He made the comment that I needed to come back more often. He'd lived in that area and knew of these places but had never gone there.

Terry

Russ Ranger · RV-Dreams Family Member

We've spent six weeks wandering our way through Northern Arizona and Southern Utah during April and May 2015. My goal was to see as much of this amazing area as we could before heading north to Washington state. I knew I wanted to see the Grand Canyon and the "Big 5" national parks.

What I didn't know was there would be millions of acres of other amazing parks including National Monuments, National Forests, State Parks and BLM lands (Bureau of Land Management). There was just too much to see to fit into six weeks.

We experienced snow storms, 90 degree days, thunder storms, high winds, sand storms, rain and almost any weather you can imagine. This weather had an effect on our abilities to fully see some areas but was part of the great experiences we had.

I had preconceived ideas as to what area we would enjoy the most. My ratings of what we liked best surprised me in the end. Here are the winners.....

Bryce Canyon National Park - The best way to describe this park is "Shock and Awe". I had no idea before visiting this park that it would be our favorite place. Stunning is not a powerful enough word to use when describing Bryce.

Zion National Park - A hikers paradise. This park is a visual overload for the eyes. We spent a week here and enjoyed it all.

Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument - This is not one of the "Big 5" but with 1.7 million acres of awesome scenery it deserves our third place vote. It also was the area of our Peek-a-Boo slot canyon hike, our favorite hike of the year.

Arches National Park - I thought this would be my favorite park, it could have been if not for the other places we have seen. It is still an amazing place to visit.

Capitol Reef Nation Park, Grand Canyon National Park, Canyonlands National Park finish out our list with several state parks and BLM land as close contenders.

It was really all amazing. Enjoy your adventures in the next few week.

bjoyce · RV-Dreams Family Member

Cedar Breaks is worthwhile, as is the Kobob Canyons area of Zion, and you can do both in one day trip from the main part of Zion. Actually there are lots of places that are worthwhile in Southern Utah. Sometimes the more off the beaten track places have the best memories. We talk about Cedar Breaks and Goblin Valley State Park (between Moab and Bryce) somewhat often because of events, and we were only at both of them for a couple hours. Just hitting the high points is for those on a tour bus, in my humble opinion.

Hdrider · RV-Dreams Family Member

bjoyce wrote:
Cedar Breaks is worthwhile, as is the Kobob Canyons area of Zion, and you can do both in one day trip from the main part of Zion. Actually there are lots of places that are worthwhile in Southern Utah. Sometimes the more off the beaten track places have the best memories. We talk about Cedar Breaks and Goblin Valley State Park (between Moab and Bryce) somewhat often because of events, and we were only at both of them for a couple hours. Just hitting the high points is for those on a tour bus, in my humble opinion.

I tried to get us a spot in Goblin State Park for when we leave Moab but no such luck. I wanted to stay there for 2 or 3 days before moving on to Torrey. But that goes along with not making plans in advance.

bjoyce · RV-Dreams Family Member

Hdrider wrote:
bjoyce wrote:
Cedar Breaks is worthwhile, as is the Kobob Canyons area of Zion, and you can do both in one day trip from the main part of Zion. Actually there are lots of places that are worthwhile in Southern Utah. Sometimes the more off the beaten track places have the best memories. We talk about Cedar Breaks and Goblin Valley State Park (between Moab and Bryce) somewhat often because of events, and we were only at both of them for a couple hours. Just hitting the high points is for those on a tour bus, in my humble opinion.
I tried to get us a spot in Goblin State Park for when we leave Moab but no such luck. I wanted to stay there for 2 or 3 days before moving on to Torrey. But that goes along with not making plans in advance.

We day tripped to Goblin Valley from a campground in Green River. That same day we also drove I-70 west to SR10 and stopped at all of the viewpoints going both directions. We did pack a picnic lunch and snacks.

gypsymaus · RV-Dreams Family Member

Lot's of great information here! I have only experienced hiking Utah from an Elliptical machine! I can't wait to make the trek! :)

Howard · Host

Since we're talking Utah, North Coyote Buttes (aka "The Wave") on the Utah/Arizona border is fabulous IF you can win the lottery to get in. Only 20 people per day allowed, only 10 of those by walk-in lottery the day before you go, the others are by online lottery at least four months in advance. I went to the walk-in lottery four mornings in a row and got lucky our last day. :)

Hdrider · RV-Dreams Family Member

Howard wrote:
Since we're talking Utah, North Coyote Buttes (aka "The Wave") on the Utah/Arizona border is fabulous IF you can win the lottery to get in. Only 20 people per day allowed, only 10 of those by walk-in lottery the day before you go, the others are by online lottery at least four months in advance. I went to the walk-in lottery four mornings in a row and got lucky our last day. :)

Thanks for that Howard!! Diane and I were just talking yesterday about that hike you did. This will help us not need to go searching.
And to touch back on our question, ever though we hate to reserve in advance we figured we better and are glad we did because at a couple spots they were already booked up. But we have a spot for 5 days in Torrey so we can explore Capital Reef, 5 days in Bryce and 1 week in Zion. We are still in Moab until next week. Just did a 4 Hummer Tour today that was a hoot.