Why Utah offers the best road trippin' in all America

PARK LIFE

Utah has five national parks, the third most of any US state. Zion, the oldest, received record visitor numbers topping five million in 2021, making it the country’s second most visited park. 

But if like me, your lockdown fantasy was being entirely away from other people, southern Utah’s lesser-known gems are for you. And if a road trip through this region is to journey into escapist fantasy, Scenic Byway 12 is our portal.

“The nearest stoplight is 80 miles away,” says our guide, Shybree. “We’ve definitely left everybody behind.”

From Salt Lake City it’s a four-hour drive through meadows, silos and homesteads to the dusty red rocks to reach the start of the road at Torrey, where you’ll find Capitol Reef national park. 

Byway 12 stretches 123 miles from here to Red Canyon, just beyond Bryce Canyon. Four hours more will take you to Vegas to fly home. Although you could drive all of Byway 12 in three hours, if you do it the right way – the slow way – it’ll take you at least five days.

Monumental, remote and under-visited, last year this national park – with its staggering plateaus and arches – attracted around a million visitors. As well as trekking its red rock plateaus with the help of my trusty llama with Wilderness Ridge Trail Llamas, here, you have to look up. 

“You’re going to be following a strange hairy man into the national park, so we want you to feel safe about that,” says Mason, our hirsute guide from Sleeping Rainbow Adventures, waving a torch in the darkness. Utah has the highest concentration of International Dark-Sky Association-certified locations in the US, including Capitol Reef. From late June to October the park is open for night-sky Milky Way tours. 

From Torrey, Byway 12 rises like the spine of a dinosaur, spanning crevices, mountains, canyons, forests and towns of only a few hundred people, reaching an elevation of 9,000ft before descending to hug the successive plunging inland cliffs of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. 

GRIPPING EXPERIENCE 

The town of Escalante provides access to some of the area’s most unique natural attractions. Alongside petrified forests, and dinosaur footprints immortalised in the rock, there’s the canyons. 

“For canyoneers, Escalante is the ultimate – worldwide,” says Rick Green, owner of Excursions of Escalante, who has been “pushing butts to these canyons” for 23 years. “It is what the north shore of Hawaii is to surfing. The hardest canyons in the world are here. Some of the most beautiful are here – and the most are here.”

“That’s it, donate some fabric,” Rick coaxes as I shuffle my way above a 30-metre empty void, wedged in and anchored by my bum against one wall of the canyon and my foot against the other. 

Here, deep in the desert, when it does rain the violence of flash floods has carved the soft slickrock of the valley floor into hundreds of intricate canyons, with folds, ledges, sudden switchbacks and gulleys. Climbing down into them is a sport. 

Building confidence, we clamber and rappel down dramatic drops that terrified me at the start of the day. Though a little strength and agility helps, Rick maintains some of his best customers are inexperienced groups of women in their 70s. “It’s about teamwork, that’s it,” he explains.

It’s time for bed, and new opening Yonder is calling. Described as an outdoor luxury resort, its collection of vintage Airstream caravans, purpose-built modern cabins, communal fire pits, food trucks and BBQs – not to mention its drive-in with a classic movie every night – tap into nostalgia for the great American road trip. Escalante is the first of many planned sites in “iconic” US destinations. 

“With travel becoming more experiential-led, we’re having a lot of success,” says Emma Sallquist, director of sales and marketing at Yonder, who says that though the property aimed to attract “millennial glamping types”, they’ve been overwhelmed by the number of families since it opened in March 2022.

“What we’re doing is really untapped, where families can experience this part of the country without having to rough it. It’s about that nostalgic component of the great American West.”

Nostalgic is right. Rising on the last morning to walk Bryce Canyon’s rock spires, or hoodoos, by dawn, this is a landscape shaped by time, and yet seemingly unaffected by it. In these valleys and plains, cowboys still roam, road trippers still wander and classic cars still frequent the desert. 

Book it: North America Travel Service offers an eight-night Scenic Byway 12 itinerary from £2,166pp, including return flights into Salt Lake City and out of Las Vegas, eight nights’ accommodation (one night in Salt Lake City, two at Broken Spur in Capitol Reef, two in Escalante, two at Ruby’s Inn Bryce Canyon and one in Kanab) and all-inclusive car hire with Hertz. northamericatravelservice.co.uk; email travel.agents@nats-uk.com