%3Amax_bytes(150000)%3Astrip_icc()%2FTAL-header-rv-utah-RVEXPLOREUT0725-1007f82cc52841b6807282657d4b6881.jpg&w=3840&q=100)
I've Never Owned a Car, but I Rented an RV to Explore Utah's National Parks—Here's What I Learned
As far as we can tell, he got bitten by the RV bug after seeing the classic Disney short 'Mickey's Trailer' at age 5. He immediately begged to go on an RV trip, which we forgot for a few years until we clambered into our Airstream rental during a stay at AutoCamp in Joshua Tree and Calder all but burst into tears at the discovery it was stationary. He got his revenge this year, when he suggested we turn our spring break tradition of visiting national parks into a real RV adventure.
'Think of the money we'll save on hotels,' he said. Instagram overheard us and I got served up a sponsored post for the German-based company Roadsurfer, promising a 20 percent discount. Next thing I knew, we were in Las Vegas, checking to make sure our black water tank was empty before hitting the road in a 12,000-pound vehicle with no rearview mirror.
Was it amazing? Yes. Were there things I wish I'd known ahead of time? Yes. And fortunately I'm here to share them with you. A group photo at Dead Horse Point State Park.
Ellen Carpenter/Travel + Leisure
As I planned our trip from the comfort of a Manhattan apartment, Utah's parks didn't appear too far apart from each other. Google Maps assured me we could make it from Zion National Park to Dead Horse Point State Park in four hours. Doable, I thought. We'd have plenty of time to explore the sculpted canyons and hike the six-mile loop trail. Google did not share with us its assumption we'd be cruising along at the Utah speed limit of 80. Since our RV started to shake above 65, the drive took us well over six hours, landing us at Dead Horse at 4 p.m., utterly exhausted and only able to shuffle our way along the one-mile Colorado River Overlook trail. We wound up spending most of our time sitting and taking in the epic beauty of the seemingly endless canyon. It was lovely, but had I known how long we'd be driving, I'd have extended our trip by at least a day, gone at a more leisurely pace, and incorporated more stops.
By the time we arrived at Zion National Park on our first day, the visitor's parking lot was full, so we were forced to park in Springdale, the adjacent town, and take the free shuttle bus. This was a good thing as the park was packed, with cars slowly snaking their way up the narrow, winding roads—not ideal for RV driving. Plus, RVs have to pay $15 and be 'escorted' through the tight Zion-Mount Carmel Tunnel in the upper part of the park. The shuttle, meanwhile, takes you everywhere you need to go—Angels Landing, Emerald Pools, the Narrows—and for free.
We made the mistake of driving into Bryce Canyon National Park, only to discover RVs are forbidden at basically every major viewing point from April to October. We inched our way up to Rainbow Point, where we were finally able to park and venture out for a hike. But I kept thinking about all the magical hoodoos and photo ops I was missing.
We only booked our trip two months in advance, and all of the state and national park campgrounds were full. But it turned out for the best. Since it wasn't yet the high season, prices at the private RV parks were reasonable (from $37 to $68 per night), and they came with great amenities, including showers, pools, Wi-Fi, even mini golf. The brand-new Zion White Bison had a herd of white bison. While it would have been nice to stay at the national parks, most campgrounds don't have electric and sewage hookups. As first-time RVers, these little luxuries were key.
RV parks are social spaces. If you're used to solitary hotel stays like me, it can take some time to embrace this community mentality. But you should. As soon as we'd pull in and find our designated spot, a smiling stranger would amble over and ask us where we were from. Thirty minutes later, we'd still be standing there discussing the hikes we took, wildlife we spotted, and where we stopped for lunch. At Spanish Trail RV Park in Moab, what I thought would be a five-minute dip in the hot tub turned into an hour-long gabfest with newly empty nesters from Tucson. Meanwhile, Calder did cannonballs in the pool with a slew of kids. At the KOA campground in Hurricane, an older couple helped me back into our site (reverse parking is hard) and then told us about their cross-country adventure from Tennessee to California, dog in tow.
When you're hiking through Arches National Park in 80-degree weather, it's difficult to imagine you'll need to turn on the heat at night. But you will. I woke up shivering at 4 a.m. and had to stumble out into the freezing cold to turn the knob on the propane tank so I could switch on the heat. Just be sure to shut it off before heading out in the morning.
One cost-saving benefit of traveling in an RV is you can cook your own meals. After picking up our RV in Vegas, we stopped to stock up on coffee, granola, sandwich ingredients, frozen turkey burgers, and a box of Utah's beloved FatBoy ice cream sandwiches. The money we saved on breakfast alone was eye-opening. At Arches, after doing the Delicate Arch hike—a trip highlight—we came back to our RV, made sandwiches in our air-conditioned 'kitchen,' and then headed back out to explore some more. That night, we grilled up turkey burgers and ate at the picnic table by our site under a clear, star-studded sky.
But one can't live on turkey burgers alone. We ended up having two wonderful meals at family-owned spots. One night in Moab, we feasted on ribs and fry bread at Susie's Branding Iron, conveniently located across the street from our RV park. On our way to Bryce the next day, we stopped for gas in the tiny town of Loa and ended up wandering into Marinia's Country Cafe next door. An episode of Little House on the Prairie played on the TV hanging over the counter as we dug into the best chicken noodle soup of our lives, Reuben sandwiches, and sky-high slices of coconut cream pie. I think about that soup often.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Washington Post
36 minutes ago
- Washington Post
Fire crews along Grand Canyon are trying to save cabins after loss of historic lodge
GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK, Ariz. — Crews fighting a wildfire that destroyed the nearly century-old Grand Canyon Lodge and a visitors center were focused Tuesday on stopping the flames from consuming nearby cabins, mule stables and other structures, fire officials said. Firefighters are dealing with a pair of wildfires along the park's less-visited North Rim that together have burned through more than 90 square miles (233 kilometers). That's more than twice the size of the entire Walt Disney World complex in Florida. Each blaze grew overnight into Tuesday, but fire officials expressed optimism that they had slowed the spread of the White Sage Fire, the larger of the two. Tourists standing along the park's popular South Rim on Tuesday could see plumes of smoke rising above the canyon walls and a haze hanging over the sweeping vista. 'By the afternoon, it was completely socked in,' Christi Anderson said of the smoke that had filled the canyon the day before. 'You couldn't see anything, none of that. It was crazy.' Anderson was visiting from California and considered herself lucky because she had shifted her reservation to the South Rim in the preceding days. Otherwise she would have been among those forced to evacuate. The Dragon Bravo Fire, ignited by a lightning strike on July 4, destroyed the lodge and dozens of cabins over the weekend. That fire had been allowed to burn for days before strong winds caused it to erupt, leading to questions about the National Park Service's decision not to aggressively attack the fire right away. Four days into the fire, the Park Service said it was being allowed to burn to benefit the land. Then on Friday, fire officials and the Park Service warned visitors to evacuate immediately as the fire grew by nearly eight times within a day. Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs has called for a federal investigation into the Park Service's handling of the fire and plans to meet with leaders from the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Department of the Interior, her office said. U.S. Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego have asked Interior Secretary Doug Burgum how the administration plans to track wildfire decision-making under a recent executive order to consolidate federal firefighting forces into a single program. The Associated Press has left phone and email messages with Park Service officials seeking comment about how the fire was managed. Over the years, managers at the Grand Canyon have successfully used fire to benefit the landscape, with the park having what some experts say is an exemplary fire management program that has tapped both prescribed fire and wildfires to improve forest health. Andi Thode, a professor of fire ecology and management at Northern Arizona University and the lead at the Southwest Fire Science Consortium, said park managers have even re-burned some areas in multiple places over the years to create what she called 'one of the best jigsaw puzzles' on public land. She noted that fire behavior decreased significantly when the Dragon Bravo Fire burned into the footprint of a previously burned area. 'So creating that heterogeneity across the landscape, using fire is a really critical tool moving forward to be able to help in the future with these wildfire events that are happening at the worst time in the worst weather conditions with the driest fuels,' Thode said. Fire officials on Tuesday said the Dragon Bravo Fire had spread to nearly 13 square miles (34 square kilometers) while the larger White Sage Fire had charred 81 square miles (210 square kilometers). Neither blaze had any containment. Park officials have closed access to the North Rim, a more isolated area that draws only about 10% of the Grand Canyon's millions of annual visitors . Hikers in the area were evacuated and rafters on the Colorado River, which snakes through the canyon, were told to bypass Phantom Ranch, an outpost of cabins and dormitories. Trails to the area from the canyon's North and South rims also were closed. The Dragon Bravo Fire flared up Saturday night, fueled by high winds. Firefighters used aerial fire retardant drops near the lodge before they had to pull back because of a chlorine gas leak at a water treatment plant, the park service said. ___ Montoya Bryan reported from Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Seewer reported from Toledo, Ohio. Associated Press writers Christopher Keller and Safiyah Riddle in Montgomery, Alabama, contributed to this report.
Washington Post
36 minutes ago
- Washington Post
Disabled travelers say they love Amtrak, but it doesn't always love them back
Aubrie Lee and her boyfriend, Peter Saathoff-Harshfield, have taken Amtrak all over the country. It gets harder each time. Lee has muscular dystrophy, which means the longer she uses her muscles, the less they work. 'Every time we do a trip like this I'm like, 'That was so exhausting — let's never do that again,'' she said. She laughed because she was speaking from a long-distance train passing through Nevada toward San Francisco. 'In the future, there are many things I won't be able to do anymore,' she said. 'And so, in my mind, there's all the more reason to do it while I still can.'
Associated Press
44 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Fire crews along Grand Canyon are trying to save cabins after loss of historic lodge
GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK, Ariz. (AP) — Crews fighting a wildfire that destroyed the nearly century-old Grand Canyon Lodge and a visitors center were focused Tuesday on stopping the flames from consuming nearby cabins, mule stables and other structures, fire officials said. Firefighters are dealing with a pair of wildfires along the park's less-visited North Rim that together have burned through more than 90 square miles (233 kilometers). That's more than twice the size of the entire Walt Disney World complex in Florida. Each blaze grew overnight into Tuesday, but fire officials expressed optimism that they had slowed the spread of the White Sage Fire, the larger of the two. Tourists standing along the park's popular South Rim on Tuesday could see plumes of smoke rising above the canyon walls and a haze hanging over the sweeping vista. 'By the afternoon, it was completely socked in,' Christi Anderson said of the smoke that had filled the canyon the day before. 'You couldn't see anything, none of that. It was crazy.' Anderson was visiting from California and considered herself lucky because she had shifted her reservation to the South Rim in the preceding days. Otherwise she would have been among those forced to evacuate. The Dragon Bravo Fire, ignited by a lightning strike on July 4, destroyed the lodge and dozens of cabins over the weekend. That fire had been allowed to burn for days before strong winds caused it to erupt, leading to questions about the National Park Service's decision not to aggressively attack the fire right away. Four days into the fire, the Park Service said it was being allowed to burn to benefit the land. Then on Friday, fire officials and the Park Service warned visitors to evacuate immediately as the fire grew by nearly eight times within a day. Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs has called for a federal investigation into the Park Service's handling of the fire and plans to meet with leaders from the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Department of the Interior, her office said. U.S. Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego have asked Interior Secretary Doug Burgum how the administration plans to track wildfire decision-making under a recent executive order to consolidate federal firefighting forces into a single program. The Associated Press has left phone and email messages with Park Service officials seeking comment about how the fire was managed. Over the years, managers at the Grand Canyon have successfully used fire to benefit the landscape, with the park having what some experts say is an exemplary fire management program that has tapped both prescribed fire and wildfires to improve forest health. Andi Thode, a professor of fire ecology and management at Northern Arizona University and the lead at the Southwest Fire Science Consortium, said park managers have even re-burned some areas in multiple places over the years to create what she called 'one of the best jigsaw puzzles' on public land. She noted that fire behavior decreased significantly when the Dragon Bravo Fire burned into the footprint of a previously burned area. 'So creating that heterogeneity across the landscape, using fire is a really critical tool moving forward to be able to help in the future with these wildfire events that are happening at the worst time in the worst weather conditions with the driest fuels,' Thode said. Fire officials on Tuesday said the Dragon Bravo Fire had spread to nearly 13 square miles (34 square kilometers) while the larger White Sage Fire had charred 81 square miles (210 square kilometers). Neither blaze had any containment. Park officials have closed access to the North Rim, a more isolated area that draws only about 10% of the Grand Canyon's millions of annual visitors. Hikers in the area were evacuated and rafters on the Colorado River, which snakes through the canyon, were told to bypass Phantom Ranch, an outpost of cabins and dormitories. Trails to the area from the canyon's North and South rims also were closed. The Dragon Bravo Fire flared up Saturday night, fueled by high winds. Firefighters used aerial fire retardant drops near the lodge before they had to pull back because of a chlorine gas leak at a water treatment plant, the park service said. ___ Montoya Bryan reported from Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Seewer reported from Toledo, Ohio. Associated Press writers Christopher Keller and Safiyah Riddle in Montgomery, Alabama, contributed to this report.
