Western Wandering- Utah’s Color Country

It looks like Will and I had similar ambitions for the summer: to breathe some fresh air, rediscover open space, and set out on a wind-blowing-through-our-hair car adventure to explore our own Western United States. My summer began with a mini road trip from Santa Barbara to Denver and will resume next week with an excursion through Yellowstone, Glacier and Banff National Parks before touring the Pacific Northwest.

My boyfriend, Kevin, and I did a quick road trip from Denver to Oakland a few months back and decided to take a different route this time through Utah’s color country. Like Will, we had our eyes set on Zion National Park and Hwy 12, which runs through Bryce Canyon National Park and The Grand Staircase- Escalante National Monument–1.7 million acres of multicolored cliffs, buttes, and canyons shaped by eons of sedimentation, uplift and erosion. In attempt to see the national parks before they’re overrun with mostly foreign tourists, Kevin and I got up before sunrise every morning and visited either very early or later in the evening when they are most pristine. About an hour outside of Zion, we camped for free at the Kolob Reservoir right near the water’s edge, and on our second night, we stayed at Kodochrome Basin State Park near Tropic, which greeted us with an incredible sunset featuring unique pinnacles that rose abruptly out of the earth. On our way back to the I-70 on day 3, we did a quick drive through Capital Reef National Park (most of which was closed on our visit) and a detour to Goblin Valley State Park off Hwy 24.

I was most inspired by the region’s amazing color contrasts. Red-and-white-striped canyons stood out against the vibrant green vegetation that grew in their folds. Charcoal roads cut through butter yellow meadows and each sunrise and sunset outdid the last. Here is a glimpse of what I saw.

“Western Wandering” is an ongoing travel series by Serena Renner on MeridianCollective.org that will feature photos, text and video from her Western U.S. road trip in August and September, 2010.

It looks like Will and I had similar ambitions for the summer: to breathe some fresh air, rediscover open space, and set out on a wind-blowing-through-our-hair car adventure to explore our own Western United States.