Back in June my friend John invited me to his bachelor party to be held in Las Vegas, if I was flying that far then I thought I might as well make a trip out of it and planned with Mariah and Nick a trip through some of the national parks in Utah. I’m not a frequent or experienced hiker and I think the only other national park I’ve been to is Yosemite (twice), but we’ve mostly only done city trips so why not???

Utah

(Movies watched on the plane: Swing Girls, F9, Ghost Killer)

Since Moab isn’t on particularly close to any major airport, I opted for Salt Lake City since the timing worked out better than flying into Vegas. The flight in was easy and the views right outside the airport were already stunning, with long, flat roads contrasted with tall mountains in the opposite direction.

I asked a friend of mine for some SLC/Provo recs since he used to live there, and he came through with a dozen fantastic looking restaurants, only for us to realize that since we’d be driving through on a Sunday that almost everything would be closed. One of those recs, and one I also got from John, was Red Iguana (2), a really fantastic Mexican restaurant with a bunch of different homemade mole. Highly recommend!!!!

The next morning I woke up and went straight to the airport to meet Mariah and Nick. We picked up our rental car (any car you want, as long as it’s a crossover SUV) and drove to the two places we knew were open: Perch Coffee to get lamingtons and pour over coffee, and Communal in Provo to get brunch. Both were super good and a great way to start the trip before our 5-ish hours of driving!!

We got to Moab, dropped off our stuff at the hotel, and immediately went to Arches. It being 6pm there was zero line to get in and the ticket-checker wasn’t even at the booth, so Mariah couldn’t get her annual pass. We drove up to the lower delicate arch view point since we didn’t want to do anything with exposure after sunset, though honestly after the later hikes I feel like it would have been fine, but seeing how crowded delicate arch was I’m very okay with our decision. Driving in we listened to the radio (I think carplay was busted or something?) and ended up listening to In a Silent Way by Miles Davis (KZMU 106.7, Moab community radio), incredible album, such a vibe.

We stayed until sunset, staying at the edge of the viewing area and taking in the changing light until around 7:30 when we left to get dinner. Obviously when you’re in Utah you get Thai food?? I guess?? It was pretty yummy and after such a long day it really hit. After dinner we turned around and went right back into Arches, this time to see the stars. Without a tripod I had to improvise a bit to get any usable photos, using the 2 second shutter delay and setting custom exposure times and just guessing and checking a lot. I had brought flashlights to make walking around easier, incredibly we didn’t even need them. The moon was so bright that despite it being 10pm I could see well enough to walk around. Really really awesome experience!!

Back to Arches the next morning, this time for our longest planned hike, the Devil’s Garden trail. A couple weeks before leaving I was talking to a friend of a friend who hikes a good amount and when I mentioned that I was going to do an 8 mile hike without hiking very often she was basically like “good luck, lol” so I was kinda worried going into this!! The trail is designed in a way where it’s like a gradual increase in difficulty, the start is very flat and easy, then the trail gets less and less clear as the routes get more and more difficult. After the first arch is a bit of a skill check where you have to scramble a little bit up a 45 degree rock incline, then after two more arches the trail starts to get kinda unclear at times and you end up having to walk along a cliff edge (the group behind us was like “haha how about you young people go ahead, we’ll be 30 feet behind you!”). Then after the fourth arch there’s a sign that is essentially saying “the trail is barely marked from here on, only keep going if you know what you’re doing” which….. do we???? Who’s to say!

From that sign onward, two hours into the hike, the heat was really starting to take its toll. Dry heat and all that, but 85 degrees and sunny was still brutal. Shade and rehydration breaks were essential and frequent at this point. But despite that, this was my favorite part of the hike by far. Crowds by this point were thinned out to almost nothing, there were maybe five groups that we’d consistently see in this part of the trail. It was a pretty incredible feeling to be this deep into largely unmanaged nature, largely alone.

My favorite arch was the private arch, a little beyond halfway through the trail. The reveal felt almost like an art piece, a natural James Turrell. None of my photos could capture this experience so I just recommend doing it for yourself 🙂‍↕️

Afterwards we walked around downtown Moab, stopped into a book store (Adrianne Lenker’s Songs was playing, Nick kept saying “I can’t believe they’re playing this right now, I can’t be in here I’m going to start crying” and left lol) and went to Dos Más Café where they gave us a bunch of free cookies since they were closing, and I bought an issue of a local art community magazine.

After breakfast, it’s off to Canyonlands. After the long hike yesterday today is our Chill day, kind of just vibing it out and mostly just driving. Canyonlands is an interesting park in that it’s giant and there’s four quadrants, two of which are pretty much only for long thru-hikes, with the other two being more accessible but only having pretty short trails. But this worked out very well for us!!!

Canyonlands looked so unreal, like in that it simply didn’t Look Real with some of the views. It was rainy with huge clouds, lightning off in the distance, which gave everything such dramatic lighting. We got rained on a few times but thankfully we were always close to the car when it happened, and ultimately worth it for how good the lighting looked (and how much cooler it was than the day before).

On the drive out and towards Zion I made a point to stop at every “scenic view point” that we saw, so many of these were truly so beautiful. Nick slept through this whole drive so I didn’t feel bad for stopping, and all of those stops combined only added maybe 25-30 minutes to the total drive time. Worth it!!!!!!!!

Going to Zion after Canyonlands and the specific Arches hike we did was so funny, going from something literally called the “primitive trail” to, in Zion, most trails being paved and very heavily trafficked. Lots of beautiful views here, funny how the paved Scouts Lookout trail was far more difficult than anything in Arches just due to it being straight uphill the entire way at a very steep grade. Far more exhausting than expected, but we still managed to also go to the emerald pools trails where a ranger told us about the 2000 year old rainfall that created the waterfalls we were seeing.

After leaving Zion we got yummy Peruvian food and then went to the Zion hot springs which was very much needed after many days of walking!! Every vacation should include a hot springs trip I think. This hot spring was my first taste of the famous Utah dirty soda…… I honestly Get It.

Time to head to Vegas!!!! Another long drive ahead of us, we stopped into Swig and I’m a total convert, we need a Swig in Boston I think. It’s basically like drinking a melted root beer float but incredibly cheap. Once we got to Vegas we went to the Pinball Hall of Fame where I mostly played video games and Writer’s Block where I bought two books (Abigail by Magda Szabó and Scorpions by Yumiko Kurahashi). After helping me check into my hotel Nick and Mariah left for their flight, and then it was time for me to wait for the other group to arrive. I went to go see Primetime at the AMC nearby since it came out the day before, which felt especially relevant since we had been watching a lot of Live PD on the hotel TVs the last week. Very bleak!

I got up early and immediately realized in horror the kind of place the Las Vegas strip is. No cute cafes to get breakfast?? No real public transit to get to places that seem interesting? No shade to wait for the (expensive, infrequent) bus to get to the arcade I want to go to? It felt designed to make you never want to leave the confines of your hotel, where everything is 2-3x more expensive than it would be anywhere else.

I took the bus to a mall to go to the Round1 to play the new IIDX, which was very fun! A good way to kill a couple hours as I had over 150 credits on my card from when I last went to a Round1 in Seattle years ago. I headed back around when people were starting to arrive, John sending me details of who I was staying with and where. I had only met two of the people in the group before but thankfully everyone was very nice and sociable (as expected of being friends with John) :’)

Then started the whirlwind 48 hours of hopping between bars, restaurants, and clubs, many of which were reserved through John’s Tao connections from his previous workplace. We went to the Omnia nightclub the first night to see Tiesto, but left after an hour or so to go to old Vegas.

The only full day of Vegas with the group started with John, his brother, and I going to brunch which was super good (we saw Krysten Ritter there??), and we then met up with everyone and went to Omnia Dayclub to see Alesso. Thankfully we got a table so that provided a bunch of shade since it was incredibly hot out (which the pool helped a lot with), but it was very fun! After we left we saw John’s brother’s childhood friend who is now a flair bartender, which was super impressive to see!! We went to dinner at a Korean steakhouse which was yummy, but due to everyone being on different schedules at this point all of our plans kept getting shifted back, so when we finally went to Omegamart we were 45 minutes late and we didn’t really spend much time there, so hopefully I can go back there eventually, what I saw was really cool.

That night we got a table for Omnia Nightclub, for Martin Garrix, but first we went back to John’s hotel room and he showed us youtube videos telling us to “LOOK, PAY ATTENTION” while his voice was completely gone and I just could not stop laughing lmao

The final day I got brunch with Harry and Frankie and we all went off to the airport. We were all flying out at around the same time but due to a storm back east all of our flights were getting delayed, so I ended up running into John at the airport since his gate was across the hallway from mine. Had a pleasant flight home, watched the 2021 West Side Story and talked to the guy next to me who was also coming back from Zion and he gave me recommendations for the next time I’m in Moab.

Great trip!! Hopefully the start of more national parks trips!

Photos shot with my Fuji X100F, Snapic A1 with Ultramax 400, and iPhone 17 with Halide 3