Utah's Mighty 3 & Grand Canyon

If someone asks me if what's the state that I like the best, it'll be Utah.  My love affair with Utah started 3 years ago, during a time where my life was at a cross road.  I quit my job and traveled to see the Antelope Canyon with a friend during my week-long vacation in 2013.  And I am back again this year to see Utah for the 3rd time.

This year is U.S National Park's Centennial.  The state of Utah is home to 5 national parks - often advertised as "Might 5" - among all 58 U.S national parks.  Since there are no big airports close to visit national parks, people normally fly into Las Vegas McCarran Airport or Utah's Salt Lake City.  The closer one between the two is McCarran Airport and since Las Vegas is one of the tourist attractions as well as cheaper accommodation options, it's a better idea to fly into Vegas.

With each visit to Utah, I covered more and more national parks.  Visiting Utah means a lot of driving as public transportation is non-existence.  This time around I wanted to see Arches National Park.  I have seen Zion and Bryce last two times as those are not far from Vegas and from each other, whereas Arches is farther north and requires additional 4 hours of driving out of the way.

After brainstorming and configuring different routes in Google map, I came up with the following itinerary:

• Day 1 - Vegas
• Day 2 -  Vegas to Zion(3 hrs drive).  Overnight at Cedar City. 
• Day 3 -  Zion to Bryce ( 2 hrs drive).  Overnight at Loa, which is half way between Bryce and Arches National Parks
• Day 4 - Continue to Arches National park.  Overnight at Moab, the town near Arches National Park
• Day 5 - Visit Antelope Canyon.  Overnight at Page, AZ near antelope Canyon
• Day 6 - Drive to Grand Canyon.  Overnight at Sedona
• Day 7 - Back to Vegas.

Granted this itinerary is very intense.  On average, there are 4 hours of driving each day and not counting the hiking that we do at the national parks.  There were 4 of us, so we split the driving.  Even with that, total driving time for this whole trip came out about 20 hrs - close to 1200 miles.  With that said, driving in Utah is pretty straight forward and no traffic.  And the beautiful sceneries totally made up for the long drive.  If you have more than a week, then you should spend more time at each of the parks to fully enjoy.  But here's the highlight of our activities in each park -

Zion National Park
Before the beginning of the trip, we were contemplating to do Angel's Landing, one of the classic yet strenuous hikes in Zion.  But most of us are acrophobic.  Even with that we were seriously considering to face our fears.  But the nature did not allow us.  No later than we stepped in the park, we started hearing thunder claps.  The park ranger at the visitor center did not recommend us the hike as it can be pretty slippery.  So, we hopped on Zion's park bus ( Zion has pretty good bus system inside the park where you can get on and get off at different stops for different trails) and got off at the Zion Lodge stop to do Emerald Pool's Trail. I'd definitely recommend to hike to Upper Emerald Pool as the water fall at the end of the trail is just spectacular.

On the way back, we merged onto Kayenta Trail which led us to the Grotto bus stop, where we got on the bus to come back to the visitor center.

View From Kayenta Trail

Bryce National Park
Bryce National Park lies north east of Zion, only 85 miles away.  Yet it holds a totally different scenery with all the hoodoos.  You do not need to hike if you don't want to as the park itself has different viewpoints where you can see all the magic that is Bryce Canyon.

View from the Rim Trail

But if you do like to hike, there are various hikes, ranging from easy hikes along the rim between Sunset Point and Sunrise Point (with little elevation gain) to more moderate hikes such as Navajo Trail, which will take you down among the hoodoos.

Hiking Among the Hoodoos

 Captiol Reef National Park

 Due to time constraint, we did not explore Capitol Reef.  I originally wanted to spend the night at Capitol Reef as it's perfect midway point between Bryce and Arches.  But due to the Memorial Day weekend, the hotels were pretty expensive.  So we stayed at this cute cabin in Loa, UT.

Arches National Park
This is my first time visiting Arches and I have to say I loved it.  This is one of the parks where you have to work hard to see your prize, the famous Delicate Arch.  You might have seen the Delicate Arch on Utah's license plates.   There are short trails where you can view Delicate Arch and avoid the hike.  But I'd recommend doing the 1.5 mile hikes (round trip 3 miles) to really enjoy this mighty arch.

The Delicate Arch

Hiking towards the arch is intense and involves an uphill slanted rock where a lot of people struggled.  But slow and steady will win the race.  Make sure you get some bottle water ( 1 or 2 should be enough) as there are no shades or cover along the hike.

The arch is situated at the end of a downhill and I have seen people have trouble navigating down to actually be at the arch.  If you have fear of height, this might be a problem.  But I still think the hike is worth it and you can get rewarded with a nice photo at the end of the trail.

Down to the Delicate Arch

Moab is a pretty big town with lots of accommodations and food options.  We stayed at Red Stone Inn, which is pretty basic.   Among food options, we came across this family operated Mexican restaurant called El Charro Loco, which I highly recommend.  

Two other activities we did in Moab is waking up early to see the morning sunrise(I'd recommend to see sunrise at Horseshoe Bend at Dead Horse Point State Park) and the Stargazing with Red Rock Astronomy which I definitely recommend.

We crossed into Arizona during the latter part of our trip.  The trip took us through Monument Valley, which itself requires some exploring.  But for us, just driving is enough and you will be guaranteed some pretty nice photographs.

Monument Valley

At the Utah - Arizona State line

Seeing Antelope Canyon for a third time take away its magic from me.  Since especially we went on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekends, the crowd was enormous and I really hated the tour.  I had done Lower Antelop Canyon past two times, hence wanted to see Upper Canyon this time, hence, I booked with Chief Tsosei Antelope Canyon Tour.  The tour guide from our group was horrible.  Not only did she did a horrible job of explaining, I even had a feeling that she might be racist.  So, I hope this will be my last time visiting Antelope Canyon.

And our last stop is Grand Canyon, and needless to say it's always marvelous...

Grand Canyon

Traveling Cheap In Australia

A trip to Australia has never really been high on my list.  There is nothing in Australia that is really screaming out to me to come, unlike New Zealand, where I was attracted to visit as I am a huge Lord of the Rings fan.   But due to some personal and family reason, I was forced to plan a visit to Australia at the last minute.   A two weeks trip that is.   With total flight time of about 24 hours each way (without including the transit), I was en route there in early December.



Here's what people told me before I went to Australia;  Australia is not a cheap country to visit.  Even visa application alone is close to $100, depending on the exchange rate, flights fare are on average about $1300 give or takes.  And with the time constraint I had, I wanted to see as much as possible. So, I picked 3 cities that I wanted to go and then spread out my time there: Sydney (because we have to go), Cairns(to see the Great Barrier Reef) and Melbourne (for the famous the Great Ocean Road, which didn't disappoint, and the Penguin parade).  In order to save time, I flew into Sydney and flew out of Melbourne.

Australia itself is divided into 7 states:

1. New South Wales aka NSW
2. Victoria - beautiful state.  Melbourne is in this State and a trip to the Great Apostle via the Great Ocean road is one of the must
3. Queensland - known for beautiful beaches and sunshine coasts and a way to get into the Great Barrier Reef
4. Western Australia
5. Northern Territory
6. South Australia 
7. Tasmania

Different people prefer to go to see different things in Australia.  Since I had limited time, I decided not to visit the Outback, which is mainly in the Northern Territory.  I also am more of a beach person than a dry land person.

With as big of a state like Australia, I chose to fly between the above three cities.  Inter-cities flight prices are pretty reasonable, with an average cost of $100 for one-way.   I used Expedia and Priceline to search for air tickets.   Buying in advance always help when it comes to flight tickets.  

When traveling, I try save as much as possible by trying not to go overboard on the accommodation.  Since we are going to be out most of the time anyway, there is no point to spending $200 a night unless you have no other options.  So, with that in mind, we stayed in only hostels.  Australia is very backpacker friendly and even though I am at my point in life where I don't want to stay in hostels, I must say that some hostels are not bad at all.  In Sydney, we stayed at a proper hotel because I had some points which I could use for free.  However, in Cairns and Melbourne, we stayed at hostels, which cost us $188(for 2 ppl 2 night) and $388(for 2 ppl 3 nights).   When it comes to international hotel booking, I like to use booking.com as I feel like their international inventories are better.  But I definitely recommend you to search around.  

The trip cost us $3500 without the airfare for two people.  This number includes food and any other tours/activities that we booked.  For example, I did my first scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef and my sister did her first Skydiving in Cairns.