A day at Bryce Canyon National Park

 

Our time at Bryce Canyon National Park was short. We could have spent more time there but I felt like a day there was plenty. 

We checked into our hotel Best Western Plus Ruby's Inn, it is a big motel but it was convenient and the right price. I always request ground floor rooms because we have to unload our car, we never leave anything in the car, the last thing I want on vacation is to deal with broken car windows. I booked this room on the Chase Travel Portal for 6,703 points or $101.50, included free breakfast. Our room was ready when we arrived around 4PM, we unloaded, showered and went to dinner. We ate at the hotel restaurant, Ruby's Inn Cowboy's Buffet & Steak Room, there is nothing special about this place we were hungry and didn't want to go far. 

After dinner we headed into the park, just a 10 minute drive from the hotel. We got our National Park Pass at the gate, stopped at the visitor's center for our stamp and souvenirs then headed to Sunset Point. 

Sunset Point

It was chilly on this overcast evening (06/27/2020), but beautiful. We headed back to the hotel to rest our legs since we had a 5 mile hike planned the next morning. 

Ready for our figure-eight loop

Our goal was to hike the Navajo Loop Trail & Peek-a-Boo Loop, which is about 5 miles. You start the hike at the top and hike down the canyon, which of course means your hike ends with a climb. The elevation change is 500 feet. 

Wall Street, amazing way to start our hike. You can see the switchbacks leading into the canyon. 

We started the hike right at 8AM and finished right around 11AM, just in time for our tailgate sandwiches in the parking lot. I wish we could have seen more of Bryce Canyon, but we needed to head over to Zion for the hike we were most excited about. 

Another great way see part of Bryce Canyon is by horse, they have horseback riding tours that take you down in the canyon. 

Capitol Reef National Park in 1.5 days

How we spent 1.5 days at Capitol Reef National Park

This post gets really long, recap at the end.

Lodging

There aren't many lodging options near the park entrance, and the only lodging option inside the park is the Fruita Campground, as much as I enjoy camping that's not something I want to do during big trips. 

We drove 3 hours from Salt Lake City to Torrey, it is the town closes to the entrance of Capitol Reef. It was completely dark when we arrived at Broken Spur Inn & Steakhouse. I didn't spend too much time researching where to stay for our time at Capitol Reef, because there aren't many options but as soon as I saw the wagon pictures I knew that's where we wanted to stay.  Sleeping in a wagon sounded like a fun way to start our big trip, spoiler alert it wasn't that much fun. The best part was that breakfast was included with our stay, I'm not a big breakfast person but having a meal before big hikes is always nice. 

Hikes

After our continental breakfast we started off with a an easy 1.8 mile hike to Hickman Bridget. The parking lot at the trailhead is very small, you must arrive early to get a spot. When going to National Parks, it is important to get up early, to get a good parking spot and enjoy the trail. We were usually one of the first 10 families on the trails. 

Not a bad way to start off our Mighty Five trip. 

We then headed back to the Visitor's Center to start our second hike of the day. We hiked part of the Sulphur Creek Trail. The Sulphur Creek is best done as a point-to-point hike, starting at the top of the trail and ending at the Visitor's Center. For that you need a second vehicle or someone willing to walk back to the starting point, which is right off Highway 24, this isn't safe or recommended. Since we didn't have a second vehicle we hiked to the first/last pool. The girls jumped off the side of the canyon and we had our first trail/roadside sandwich of the trip. 

Tip: Pack your cooler. Medium size coolers can be checked in, as long as they don't have dry ice. We have an RTIC 45 QT cooler. I had an American Express Delta Gold card, a benefit of the cards is that every person on my reservation is allowed one checked item for free. Check your airline policy, but so far our cooler has flown Delta and Southwest as a regular checked luggage. 

The Sulphur Creek Trail was an easy hike, but do your research as it is a creek and flash-flooding can be an issue, we encountered some flooding that evening. Here is a better report on hiking Sulphur Creek.

After spending the morning on our legs it was time to take a scenic drive along the Scenic Drive road.  It is a short 7.9 mile drive on a paved road. Remember when I mentioned flash floods? It started pouring rain during our drive, I don't have pictures because I was driving but Dave did manage to get a video. 

It was a quick downpour, by the time we made it back to the start of the road it had stopped raining. The rain had cleared some of the crowds so we stopped at Gifford House to eat some pie. Capitol Reef National Park has a very interesting history, there once was a small settlement that included an orchard with apple, apricots, peaches, pears and cherries. 

We were tired and ready to relax after a busy day. We headed back to our wagon to get cleaned up before grabbing dinner. There weren't many options due to COVID, we drove to town to one of the few places that was open, Slackers, they had decent burgers.  After dinner the girls spent some time at the pool. 

Day two

We still had another big hike before we left Capitol Reef National Park. We packed up, had some breakfast and headed to the Cassidy Arch trailhead. This is a must do trail, it is a 3.1 mile out and back trail. It is a moderate trail, with no shade. 

10 out of 10, don't miss out on Cassidy Arch

We had one more trail at CRNP, Grand Wash trail. The trail is 5 mile point-to-point but we didn't have time to do the entire trail, we spent about an hour walking the trail before we turned around to head back to the car. 

We then drove to Bryce Canyon National Park, but on the way there we pulled over to eat our lunch: Turkey, cheese, peperoni and pickle sandwiches. This was our lunch view.

And that concludes our tour of Capitol Reef National Park. Here is the quick recap:

• Lodging: Broken Spur Inn & Steakhouse
• Activities:
• Hickman Arch Trail
• Sulphur Creek - starting at Visitor's Center
• Scenic Drive 
• Pies at Gifford House
• Cassidy Arch Trail
• Grand Wash Trail
• Food:
• Continental breakfast at hotel
• Trail/roadside sandwiches 
• Burgers at Slackers

Link to my recommendation

Utah's Mighty Five - The Plan

I'm not sure how this trip came to be since it took place many moons ago, June/July 2020 to be exact, wow that's actually only last year but feels like forever ago.  I remember seeing beautiful pictures of Utah's Mighty Five on Instagram and Facebook, a Facebook friend had recently visited Utah, which probably lead to the planning of this trip. I was in the beginning research stages when Delta Vacations announced a new promotion. The promotion was that every Delta Mile was worth 2 cents if you booked a flight, car rental and 2 night hotels. I already had 77,000 Delta miles and over 100,000 American Express Membership Reward points, at that time I didn't have plans for those miles and points. I like to accumulate a variety of points and miles, you'll never know when you'll need them. 

The original Delta Vacations package:
4 round trip tickets from Tulsa to Salt Lake City June 25,2020 to July 04, 2020
9 day Jeep Wrangler rental
2 nights in Salt Lake City - arrival and departure days - we weren't going to use the hotels so I picket the cheapest hotels I could find. 

Our package "cost" $3,142.34 or 157,117 SkyMiles.

This was our original trip

But then COVID-19 happened. We actually benefited from COVID-19. We missed out on visiting Antelope Canyon (closed due to COVID) in Arizona, but were able to make changes to our trip that resulted in $1,575 Delta Vacations Travel voucher. We ended up changing our return flight to July 5th, adding another day to our rental car and cancelling the 2 hotel nights, which resulted in the $1,575 credit. The price of our flights and rental car dropped which made the credit so large and we weren't charged any change fees, thanks #COVID19.

The Final Plan: 

Arrive at Salt Lake City Airport at 3PM, pick up rental car, drive to In-n-Out for an early dinner (I always research In-n-Out locations), grocery pick-up at Wal-Mart then drive 3 hours to our first "hotel," Broken Spur Inn & Steakhouse to visit the first of the five National Parks in Utah, Capitol Reef National Park.  

A couple days later we would drive 2 hours to Bryce Canyon National Park to spend one night at Best Western Ruby's Inn. 

After just 24 hours in the BCNP area we would spend 2 nights in Zion National Park at the Zion NP Cabins. 

My original plan was to drive from Zion to the Lake Powell area for one night to visit Antelope Canyon, but the Navajo Nations which owns Antelope Canyon was hit hard with COVID, therefore it was closed (just opened 7/12/2021 after being closed for 1.5 years). 

Then we would cross the state and drive 5 hours to Moab to visit the last two of the Mighty Five. Staying 4 nights at the Hyatt Place Moab, and visiting Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park. 

The final Delta Vacations package:
4 round trip tickets from Tulsa to Salt Lake City June 25,2020 to July 05, 2020
10 day Jeep Wrangler rental
$1,575 Delta Vacation Voucher  

This was our itinerary, I will go in details in future posts.

Utah's Mighty 5
6/25/2020	Thursday	3PM Arrival at SLC
6/26/2020	Friday	Capitol Reef
6/27/2020	Saturday	CRNP/ Bryce Canyon
6/28/2020	Sunday	BYNP/Zion
6/29/2020	Monday	Zion
6/30/2020	Tuesday	Zion/Moab
7/1/2020	Wednesday	Arches
7/2/2020	Thursday	Arches
7/3/2020	Friday	Canyonlands
7/4/2020	Saturday	Arches
7/5/2020	Sunday	2PM Departure SLC

As I recap and plan trips you will notice a common theme on our travel dates, I like to book trips that include holidays because it's a free vacation day. 

Why "The Murrays Travel" Blog

Why start a travel blog? Well you all know I love to travel, and as much as I love to travel I really enjoy the planning part of the trips. I also love sharing our adventures, via Instagram and Facebook. Friends are always asking for travel tips and recommendations. I figured this would be the best way to share all my research. 

I will be going back in time, starting with our 2020 adventures, I won't recap all of them in detail. I will focus on the big trips that take a lot of  research and planning. I won't be sharing any Disney planning details as there are plenty of blogs that do an excellent job. 

We use miles and points to pay for all of our flights & hotels, most of our miles/points come from credit card sign up bonuses, referrals & promotions. I'll share my favorite cards and give you some tips on earning extra points/miles. I am happy to answer any questions regarding earning & using points/miles via email. You can find our referral links on the sidebar, thank you for supporting our travel.

Wild Goose Island - Going to the Sun Road - Glacier National Park