Baby Travels in Utah’s National Parks

Our Baby filled adventure to Zion and Arches National Parks while exploring nature in America’s Southwest!

August 2021 Utah Trip Summary:

• Newark, NJ 🡪 Salt Lake City, UT 🡪 Provo, UT 🡪 Zion National Park 🡪 Page, AZ 🡪 Monticello, UT 🡪 Moab, UT 🡪 Salt Lake City, UT 🡪 Newark, NJ

Baby Gear Worth Noting:

• The front baby carrier (Anyone works!)
• Our baby hiking backpack
• The UppaBaby stroller-into-a-carseat combo
• Folding fabric travel crib
• Diaper bag

Logistics:

• Luggage: We packed a large duffel bag with clothes, the car seat base, and other odds and ends which we checked.  We both avoid checking luggage at all costs, but seeing as how we needed the car seat base we couldn’t see a way around it.  Everything else fit either in the diaper bag, or in the baby hiking backpack which we crammed full to bursting and then brought onboard as a carryon.   
• Flight: We bought two adult airline tickets and held him on our laps.  He was fussy for the first half of the 5-hour flight, but we were able to get him to sleep on my husband’s chest for the last hour-and-a-half.  
• Rental: We rented a car through Truro.  It was $1,200 for the three weeks we had it, which was half the price it would have been through Budget or Enterprise at the time.  We arranged it in advance, picked up the car in the airport long-term garage where the owner parked it, and were on our way.  It was also a Chevy Equinox, which came in handy on some of the rougher roads of the Utah backcountry, or at some of the more remote trailheads.  
• Stroller: We checked the baby stroller at the gate in Newark, and picked it up at the gate in Salt Lake City.  We were fortunate that our mothers pooled their money to buy us an UppaBaby stroller when our son was born, which includes an infant car seat that snaps into the stroller, and also into a car seat base which we just packed in our checked baggage.  That made everything so much easier.  We have since graduated to the SafeRider Travel Vest for trips, as our son has outgrown the infant car seat and the vest is easier to pack.  He dislikes it, but we’re hoping he comes around.

Our route is listed below, with highlights and baby-related lessons learned if you’re interested.  Enjoy!

Provo, UT

We started the trip in Salt Lake, but really we were staying in Provo, UT, about an hour to the south.  My Doctorate in Speech-Language Pathology graduation ceremony was being held there, so we rented an AirBnB apartment owned by a young Mormon couple and met my parents for a few days to explore the area.  Provo is a great college town with a lot of good restaurants and coffee shops all around its downtown area.  The best thing about it for us, though, was the trail system that starts right in some of the neighborhoods and goes straight up into the hills.  There are also series of letters built into the hills all up and down I-15 in Utah, and you can climb up to a lot of them from trails right in the suburbs (Provo has a giant “Y” looking down over it).  Most of our time in Provo was spent relaxing with family, taking pictures, hiking, and eating good food.  There are great public parks all over the city, some of which have great views because they are up on the hillsides.  There is also a beautiful paved trail along US Route 189 northeast of Provo with waterfall views, picnic areas, a good space for little ones to run around in, and a beautiful drive.  

Park City, UT

We spent a day in Park City checking out the ski resort in the hottest month of the year.  There was a massive arts festival going on, which made the long drive up well worth it.  It was hot, but we were able to keep our little guy under his stroller awning or inside for much of the day, and walking around was a lot of fun.  For whiskey drinkers High West Distillery is also located on the edge of Park City, and is well worth a visit if you have the time.  The only downside was parking, as the entire town is hillside, and walking back to the car was like a mini-hike all on its own.

Zion, UT

From Provo we packed up the little guy and headed south to Zion National Park.  Being the frugal misers that we always strive to be we booked a one-room cabin at a campground on AirBnB for our stay.  What we didn’t realize was that this cabin was part of the Zion Ponderosa Ranch Resort, which is an adventure resort in the mountains just outside the national park that comes complete with a pool, public showers, a dining hall, horseback riding, wilderness excursions, and its own comprehensive trail network that links up with the trails inside the park itself.  Because we didn’t book through the resort (they advertise cabins that don’t rent out through AirBnB) we had to pay for the dining hall meals and any of the fun stuff, but the resort facilities (including the pool) were all free of charge!  It was the best surprise.  

It was also great for our son because it allowed us to spend the hottest part of the day in the shade, in the pool, or in our cabin where he could nap and we could recover before going back out in the evening.  He also loved the goats and other farm animals that roam freely around the facility.  We made liberal use of the trails, hiking to Observation Point inside Zion National Park from our cabin, and also around other trails that don’t go as far in but offer still-great views.  

Zion as a national park is breathtaking in its many-colored beauty, with rocks flowing along the roadside in every direction and made up of every variation of red and orange imaginable.  The drive through the first time around is absolutely stunning and worthwhile.  The park is also unique because visitors can’t drive themselves to most of the trailheads.  They instead have to drive through the park to Springdale, UT, and catch a shuttle from there into the main canyon where the best-known hikes originate from.  We didn’t know this logistical detail, and didn’t want to bother with it considering our hottest-part-of-the-day and nap-time limitations, so we stuck with what we could access on our own.  There are several trails that branch off the one public-access road, including the Canyon Overlook Trail which was amazing at sunset, and some smaller ones close to the Checkerboard Mesa.  There are also several pull-offs where you can get out of the car and wander into the brush or down into the dry riverbed, which were great for our little guy to just explore on his own without being able to get into too much trouble.  We’re always looking for open spaces like that for him to be himself in, and when we find them we tend to come back frequently.  

We enjoyed Zion so much that we spent an extra day in the area.  We had originally planned on taking a day to drive the 90 minutes up to Bryce Canyon National Park, but there was so much to do between the park and the campground that we felt our time was better spent staying in the area, and we have no regrets.  We will most definitely be back in the future to see more.

Our Favorites from Zion:

• Canyon Overlook Trail… The best views from any hike we’ve done…Maybe EVER.
• Zion Ponderosa Ranch Resort (Pools, animals for kids to enjoy, hike connections to Zion National Park, rock walls, breathtaking stars, and playgrounds)
• Milo’s favorites included: the sand… all of the sand! Tasting the rocks of ZIon National Park. The goats, chanting on our hikes, people who hike with ukuleles, and all the people to say hi to on the trails!

Page, AZ

From Zion we continued south into the wilder desert of northern Arizona.  Page, AZ, located on the edge of the Lake Powell Reservoir which itself is a dammed-up portion of the Colorado River, is a neat little town with a lot of outdoor activities.  It is also, and this is very important, home to Big John’s Texas Barbecue, which was our first meal in town and our best meal on the entire trip.  Go to Page for the barbecue, even if you hate the desert and everything else in it.  You’ll leave fat and happy.

We had initially planned on spending three days in Page, but ended up cutting it short after two because it was incredibly hot with very little to do indoors during the middle of the day.  That became a problem for us with the munchkin, so we improvised.  What Page does have going for it, the temperature notwithstanding, are what my husband says were the coolest hikes of the trip.  Our first morning we spent at the Cathedral Wash, a long, winding dry river bed that gets deeper and deeper into the rockbed the further you scramble along.  With the little guy in our hiking backpack it was easy enough to manage the rocks for about three quarters of a mile, but we turned around after that as the sun was getting higher in the sky.  It is definitely worth a visit, even if you just go a little ways, because of the way the walls of the river bed seem to grow around you.  After that we stopped at Lee’s Ferry on the Colorado River and cooled off as the rafters were setting out on their Grand Canyon rafting expeditions.  

That night we checked out Lone Rock Beach, which is a neat hippy-and-open-space-camping area on the edge of Lake Powell, with a massive rock rising out of an island in the middle of the lake just a few hundred yards away.  The next morning we took it easy, and that following evening we did was my husband thinks was the best hike, up to the Toadstools Hoodoos off US Route 89.  They are actually across the border back in Utah, and the trail takes you up into the hills where a wild amount of mushroom-shaped rocks stand around at random on a rolling, rock-covered hillside.  It was a surreal experience at sunset, and another great place for our son to get out of the backpack and crawl around on his own for a bit.

Our Favorites from Page:

• Not having to share Nature with anyone (nearly anyone). We were often the only hikers on some incredibly unique trails.
• Feeling like we were in another world amidst odd geography. Geographically Page is striking with its landscape and rock formations that speckle the surroundings.
• Milo’s favorites included: the rocks at Lone Rock Beach, listening to Country Roads on repeat, and pushing the limits of bedtime doing late hikes under the stars.

Monticello, UT

From Page, AZ we drove east to US 160, and then turned north into the Monument Valley of southern Utah.  This was the most consistently scenic drive of the entire trip, and also the longest, which concerned us with the little guy in the back.  We kept him entertained with songs, food, and occasional pit stops, and fortunately he fell asleep as we were approaching the first rock formations which meant we could enjoy the views completely.  If you’ve ever seen any John Ford Western then you’ve seen Monument Valley.  If you haven’t, then you’ve still probably seen it somewhere else, but that is nothing like driving through in person.  The monuments are massive, but the distance between them is also massive in that wide open desert, and it was an amazing couple of hours.

Unfortunately there aren’t many places to stop for food on the drive, but we finally found a good restaurant at the Twin Rocks Trading Post in Bluff, UT.  They served delicious Native American dishes, and had an impressive art gallery attached to it where the owners were happy to let our son run around and bang on the glass cases as he cackled at his own reflection.  He was very entertained.  

By the time we reached Monticello we realized we were pretty tired of driving, so we cut the day short and found a motel for the night.  In times like these the fold-up travel crib was very useful, because we didn’t need to worry about whether or not the room had a crib.  Monticello was surprisingly beautiful because it rises up above the desert in a cooler, very green part of the Abajo Mountains.  We found a beautiful forest park outside town with a massive reservoir and a paved path that went all the way around it, and that is how we spent the afternoon.  It was comfortable and perfect.  The next day as we drove to Moab we went for another hike in the mountains, which give an incredible view of the dry, brown desert below, and took a series of side roads down the northern side of them until we found the main road again and kept on moving north.

Arches National Park & Dead Horse Point State Park     

Moab is an incredible experience in the desert.  A town full of life, it has food and shops an every manner of outdoor activity you can imagine.  It also has Arches National Park on its northern periphery, Canyonlands National Park to its west, and Dead Horse Point State Park (equally as stunning but much cheaper and less crowded) just past that.  We stayed at the River Canyon Lodge, which was great for the little guy as he had the room to frolick in and a bed to jump on, and took a lot of walks around town.  The town is great to explore, and has some of its own bike paths, footpaths, and public parks that interconnect and take you to all the good food.  

Arches, like Zion, was an incredible experience.  It is also massive.  We drove to a few of the arch hikes, where we frequently stopped to let our son get out of the backpack and play with the sand that he had recently become fascinated with.  It was understandably crowded, but not so much that it bothered us, and we were more concerned about the heat than the crowds.  We kept the hikes to the mornings and evenings like before, and made it all the up to Delicate Arch with the little one with only a modest amount of huffing and puffing.  I am glad he was in the backpack, though, because there were some seriously steep drop-offs at some points on the trail.  He did get fussy at one point and throw his bottle off a cliff, which meant I had to go climbing down after it while my husband laughed at me, but otherwise it was an easy place to bring him.  

We didn’t visit the Canyonlands National Park, but we did go to Dead Horse Point State Park on a recommendation from some people we had met in town, and it was also incredible.  The views are as good as in Arches, but there are fewer of them, and fewer trails.  It was still worth the drive to get away from people for a bit and see the Canyonlands from a distance on the way in.  There is also a brewery in Moab which was very child-friendly, and our son made friends with all the waitresses when we went there both times.  

Our Favorites from Moab/ Arches:

• Food! This is a foodier destination compared to the others on this list (Moab Coffee Roasters…for ice cream, Moab brewery for everything, and Moab Diner for post-hike face-stuffing).
• Walkability… Moab is a low-key city that allowed us to easily walk to eat, to see murals, and do everything in a few minute’s time. This was invaluable with Milo!
• Milo’s favorites included: getting to climb more, running Moab’s baseball field, eating endless ice cream, and Moab Brewery waitresses.

Salt Lake City  

We finished off the trip with a few days in Salt Lake City, and a whole lot of culture shock.  After so much time on the road and in the more remote parts of the state the city was a bit of a surprise, but Salt Lake is a great place to be with kids.  We could walk almost anywhere easily, even from our hotel which was about a mile from the downtown, and there are a lot of parks with massive playgrounds.  We especially spent a lot of time at Liberty Park, which had a huge expanse of open green space, lots of swings and other playground equipment for our son, and a long system of paths with some food around it that was easy to access.  It is also walking distance to Trolley Square, a mall built in a converted trolley station that is a great place to walk around when it gets hot outside.

The rest of Salt Lake City was just as child-friendly, with the massive Discovery Gateway Children’s Museum in a neighborhood full of food and shops, a play area inside the Church of Latter Day Saint’s Family History Library (a genealogy research center), and a large outdoor pedestrian shopping and dining area, with children’s areas set aside, called the Gateway near the Children’s museum.  We felt very comfortable the entire time we were in the city, and would go back in a heartbeat.

Favorite/ Must do:

Get Tacos…. it was at this part of the trip where we began realizing that Utah Tacos (specifically every Taco tasted in Salt Lake City) were phenomenal and so cheap!

Final Notes:

The trip was well worth it, but there were some challenges.  The flight out was rough because our son was constipated.  Unfortunately, this didn’t manifest itself until halfway through, but it contributed directly to his severe discomfort and screaming for the first 2-3 hours of the 5-hour trip.

The heat, as I said, was a constant concern and we decided early on to just do what we could with the limited cooler hours we had.  We didn’t go everywhere we wanted to go, and had to cut several hikes or side trips short because our little guy wasn’t interested.  We learned to go with the flow, and to appreciate the down time when we weren’t doing anything in particular as a chance to rest and plan our next move.  We never felt like time we weren’t doing something was wasted.  The relaxation time in the AirBnBs or hotels while our son was napping was some of the most comfortable parts of the trip, and let us doze off or just watch a movie without worrying about anything.

Keeping the rental clean proved to be a challenge with the little guy throwing his bottle every 10 minutes on the longer drives.  Because it was a Turo rental, rather than a rental agency, we felt more responsible for keeping it neater, and my husband had to take it out and vacuum it thoroughly before we returned it at the end of the trip.  

Sand.  There was sand everywhere and in everything.  It was like living at the beach without the ocean.