One coherent slice of an enormous country: the canyon country of Utah and Arizona, following the river that carved it and that is now the most legally contested water in the world. Five national parks, two Navajo Nation sites, and a great deal of driving.
Las Vegas, and out
Fly in, collect the car, and leave. Vegas is the cheapest gateway to this landscape and returns essentially all its indoor water to Lake Mead — which is more interesting than the Strip and takes less time to see.
Zion
A canyon you enter from the bottom rather than look into from the top. The shuttle runs the scenic drive; Angels Landing needs a permit by lottery and a head for exposure. The Narrows is walked in the river itself, upstream, in rented boots.
Bryce
Not a canyon but an eroding escarpment, filled with hoodoos — columns left standing where frost has taken everything around them. Walk down the Navajo Loop into the amphitheatre rather than photographing it from the rim with everyone else.
Escalante
Grand Staircase–Escalante is the empty quarter of southern Utah — slot canyons at Peek-a-boo and Spooky, the Devils Garden hoodoos, and a road that is unpaved for long stretches. Check conditions before committing a two-wheel-drive car.
Capitol Reef
The least visited of Utah’s five and the most geologically legible: a hundred-mile buckle in the earth’s crust called the Waterpocket Fold, with a Mormon pioneer orchard at Fruita in the middle of it that you can still pick from in season.
To Moab
Across the San Rafael Swell to the town that services both Arches and Canyonlands. Afternoon: Arches in the low light, when the crowds thin and the sandstone goes properly red.
Arches
Over two thousand catalogued arches in a small area, formed where a salt bed beneath the sandstone collapsed and fractured it. Delicate Arch at sunset is the postcard and is worth the queue; the Devils Garden trail is the better walk.
Canyonlands
Island in the Sky looks down on the confluence of the Green and the Colorado from 600 metres up — the two rivers that made everything you have driven through. Mesa Arch at dawn; Grand View Point for the scale.
Monument Valley
A Navajo Nation tribal park, not a national park, and visited on Navajo terms — the valley drive is self-drive on a rough track, and the back-country areas require a Navajo guide. It is the landscape that shaped how the world pictures the American West.
Page and Glen Canyon
Antelope Canyon is on Navajo land and entered only with a Navajo guide by timed ticket. Horseshoe Bend is a short walk. Lake Powell’s bathtub ring — the pale band of exposed rock above the water — is the clearest thing in this itinerary.
Grand Canyon South Rim
Two and a half hours south-west. The rim trail is paved and flat and delivers most of the view; go to Hopi Point or Lipan Point for sunset and stay after everyone leaves, when the canyon changes colour for another twenty minutes.
Below the rim
A canyon seen only from the top has not been seen. South Kaibab to Ooh Aah Point or Cedar Ridge is a short, steep out-and-back that puts you inside it. Do not attempt the river and back in a day — the park service rescues people who try, every summer.
Hoover Dam
Back toward Vegas via the dam that started all of this in 1936 — a piece of Depression-era engineering that still generates, and behind it a reservoir whose falling level is the visible edge of the compact that divided the river in 1922.
Out
Return the car and fly. You will have driven somewhere around 2,400 km / 1,500 mi, which is a normal amount for this country and a shock the first time.
Good to know
Several parks now use timed-entry or permit systems that change annually — Arches, Zion’s Angels Landing, and Antelope Canyon among them. Check the current rules the month you book, not the month you travel.
Summer on the plateau is dangerously hot below the rim and busy above it. April–May and September–October are the windows.
Distances are the itinerary. Fuel up when you can, carry more water than you think, and treat unpaved roads as impassable after rain unless you have clearance and experience.
Shorter or longer?
Zion, Bryce and the Grand Canyon South Rim — the classic loop from Las Vegas.
A multi-day rafting trip through the Grand Canyon, by permit lottery or commercial outfitter — the only way to see it properly.
Continue east to New Mexico for Chaco Canyon, Taos Pueblo and the high desert.