Zion National Park for Families – 2TravelDads

Zion National Park - 2TravelDads

One of the most popular National Parks in the United States is Zion National Park. Even though Yellowstone and Glacier hold our hearts, we may have just left another piece of them at Zion. Planning for and visiting Zion National Park with kids is really wonderful. There are boundless options for hiking and relaxing, and getting around the park is an adventure in itself. Here’s how you can make visiting Zion National Park easy and stress free… cuz that’s most important when there’s nature to be a part of.This is our guide to planning a Zion National Park visit. Below you’ll find tips for navigating the park experience, great ways to help kids (and adults) learn with National Park programs, and tips for transportation all around. If you have questions we don’t answer, leave us a comment or send us a note!

As adults, when we visit National Parks we stop into the ranger station or Visitor Center and pick our hikes and go. When you visit with kids there is more to consider, including educational opportunities and things you had no idea would be fascinating to them. Even though Zion might not be on a kid’s bucket list, they will want to enjoy themselves just as much as the adults do.

Visitors Centers and Ranger Programs

The first stop you need to make what you visit Zion National Park with kids is the Visitor Center. Located just inside the main entrance from Springdale, UT, it’s the one stop shop for trail information, ranger-led programs, and Zion NPS gear. This is always where you can register for more intense trails and canyoning and get your back country permits. The main Visitors Center is mostly a stop for info and swag.

For the traditional Visitor Center history and science information, you actually need to swing into the Zion Human History Museum. Here you’ll learn about early inhabitants of the park, how people have interacted with the land and nature, and there are more rangers available for conversation and to answer many of the non-technical questions. It’s a great place to visit if you’re doing Zion with kids so they can gain some understanding and connection with the area.

By Rob Taylor – Full Story at 2TravelDads

Utah Gay Travel Resources

 

Road Trip From Vegas to Bryce Canyon – 2TravelDads

Bryce Canyon - 2TravelDads

We’ve been looking forward to this road trip for a LONG TIME. Like, I can’t even tell you how long. We are finally exploring more of the Southwest with the kids: Las Vegas and the Utah National Parks. Being from the Pacific Northwest, we’re used to cold, wet climates with lush rainforests and snow capped mountains. And saltwater on all sides of us. Our road trip from Las Vegas to Bryce Canyon National Park is going to be such a contrast to our daily life.

We’ve partnered with Best Western Hotels & Resorts to come up with an awesome spring break travel plan that includes fun, nature and family-friendly hotels in the Southwest. Our southwest road trip is all about exploring the unique nature of Utah while getting plenty of time relaxing together and recharging, you know, like you’re supposed to do on vacation. Yes, our itinerary will keep us busy, but we know how to strike a good balance of fun and calm. A road trip from Vegas to Bryce Canyon National Park will be just that: balanced and beautiful.

By Rob Taylor – Full Story at 2TravelDads

Utah Gay Travel Resources

 

Utah’s Capitol Reef National Park – Free Wheel Drive

Utah's Capitol Reef National Park - Free Wheel Drive

Leaving the Grand Staircase area we enter a new type of landscape. The land starts off fairly flat with lots of sand and short desert plants, but then in the distance is a ridge that soars upwards and cuts through the desert for miles.

Capitol Reef National Park got it’s name from the geological formations that can be found here. Capitol is from the sandstone features that resemble capitol building domes and Reef for the rock walls that created a barrier for travelers.

Geologists know these rock formations are apart of the Waterpocket Fold. Some 50 million years ago an old fault line was reactivated and tectonic forces started moving the earth’s crust. With this formation, only land on the West side of the fault line was pushed up while the East side remained in place. The rocks on the West side were lifted 7,000 feet in the air. Then with several million more years of erosion many of the colorful layers of sandstone and rock have been exposed.

The park is 60 miles long, but averages 6 miles wide.

By Laura and Camrin – Full Story at Free Wheel Drive

Utah Gay Travel Resources

Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument – Free Wheel Drive

Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument - Free Wheel Drive

The Grand Staircase Escalante is huge! It’s bigger than the Great Salt Lake. The largest lake in the U.S. that’s not a great lake.

A short 45 minute drive from Bryce Canyon is the enormous Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. It spans from the eastern boundaries of Bryce Canyon to Lake Powell Recreation Area.

To be honest we knew very little about what to do at the monument. Luckily we passed by an open visitor center on the way and a friendly staff member gave us more than enough information to keep us busy for weeks. We planned for about 4 full days including a day to sit at our campsite and rest. With our time we were only able to explore a section of the far Northwest corner and the far Northeast corner.

This vast land is made of canyons, plateaus, dessert life, rivers, waterfalls, ancient ruins, and dinosaur bones.

GSENM is apart of the Grand Staircase, duh. A vast area of land that stretches South from Bryce Canyon to Zion to The Grand Canyon forming a sort of sequence of steps. GSENM encompasses several of these “steps” aka layers of sedimentary rock. Refer to the photo below for a visual or our last post.

By Laura and Camrin – Full Story at Free Wheel Drive

Utah Gay Travel Resources

 

Hiking the Hoodoos in Bryce Canyon – Free Wheel Drive

Bryce Canyon Hoodoos - Free Wheel Drive

A hop and skip distance away from Zion is Bryce Canyon. Well, just under a two hour drive time. And it’s our second park of the Mighty Five.

A short two hour drive East we find ourselves in a dramatically different landscape. At a much higher elevation the nightly temperatures were well below freezing. Sick and tired of shivering at night and dealing with frozen food we caved in and spent a night in a motel before heading into the park. Only our second time crashing in a motel on our entire trip. After a night of lazy TV watching we made our way to the entrance of Bryce Canyon. Here the landscape is unlike anything we’ve encountered yet.

Bryce Canyon is not even a canyon, but a series of natural amphitheaters that have these crazy looking rock features called Hoodoos. These Hoodoo rock features were created not by a river, but by ice cracking the rocks apart and exposing the colorful sedimentary rocks underneath. Hoodoo type formations can be found all over the world. Another famous area with Hoodoos is in the Cappadocia region of Turkey where people carved houses into the rock formations.

When you arrive in Bryce Canyon you are on top of the Paunsaugunt Plateau looking East where the land descends in a series of steps known as the Grand Staircase. The Grand Staircase steps down through Zion, Vermilion Cliffs, Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, and finally The Grand Canyon.

By Laura and Camrin – Full Story at Free Wheel Drive

Utah Gay Travel Resources

 

Zion National Park – Free Wheel Drive

Zion National Park - Free Wheel Drive

Starting our Southern Utah tour with the famous Zion National Park. We spent three full days hiking into deep canyons and up the steepest scariest trails we have ever been on. Zion is most well known for its namesake canyon, Zion Canyon. The canyon is 15 miles long and up to 2,640 ft deep! Walls of the canyon are a beautiful reddish color from the layers of Navajo Sandstone. A shuttle system takes visitors up and down the Virgin River/Canyon to several trailheads, museums, and a hotel.

The canyon area was very busy with tourists during our visit, but we found that getting to the park early and hopping on the shuttle right away helped cut down on time spent waiting in line. Once in the heart of the canyon, we never had to wait more than five minutes for a shuttle. Shuttles were implemented in the 1970s as a way to reduce traffic, smog, and noise pollution. Because of the reduced car traffic, wildlife has been able to return to the canyon floor.

A Very Brief History

Zion has a long history of Native Americans thriving along the Virgin River and exploring the nearby slot canyons further up the river. It is estimated that people lived in the area as long as 8,000 years ago. It was the Mormons who were the first white people to settle the area. Mormons petitioned the National Park Service to change the park’s name to Zion. The Latter Day Saints refer to Zion as a utopia for the righteous. Seeing how beautiful the landscape is here, it’s easy to see why people thought it could be a utopia. President Woodrow Wilson made Zion an official national park in 1919.

By Laura and Camrin – Full Story at Free Wheel Drive

Utah Lesbian Travel Resources

 

Gay Moab, Utah – Travel Pulse

Gay Moab - Paul Heney

Moab’s always sort of been stuck in my head.

Maybe it’s the funny sounding name, which doesn’t sound familiar or quite like anything else. Or maybe because it’s always seemed like a cool, young, progressive place—but buried in a red state that never sounded terribly welcoming to a gay man like me.

Over my years of traveling (including a couple of trips to or through Utah), I never quite got there. And the few friends I knew who did go all seemed to be focused on mountain biking, which was not something that I was into.
But on a recent trip to experience several of Utah’s impressive National Parks, we decided that Moab would make an excellent home base to visit both Arches and Canyonlands National Parks. But we also wanted to do something memorable in the area beyond hiking. What could it be?

We ate dinner at Pasta Jay’s right in downtown Moab—good food and huge portions—and discussed our options. (We also giggled at the restaurant’s logo, as the big curvy J looked like a cursive G, making the menu appear to say, “Pasta Gay’s.” Obviously, we’d picked the right place.)

By Paul Heney – Full Story at Travel Pulse

Utah Gay Travel Resources

Red Brick Inn of Panguitch B&B – Panguitch, Utah

Red Brick Inn of Panguitch B&B Periodically we’ll feature one of our properties here to let our readers know about some great gay friendly places to stay: Comfort, Service and Relaxation are the hallmarks of the Red Brick Inn of Panguitch B&B Comfort is provided in our themed rooms with luxury linens, fridges and private baths. Service is a homemade breakfast tailored to your tastes & needs and served at a time of your choosing, 24/7 beverages & snacks and laundry service, all included. Relaxation abounds in our big, shady backyard with a deck, fire pit, hammock & gas BBQ, and comfy public rooms. AMENITIES

  • Free WiFi
  • Bottled water & soda
  • Special diets accommodated
  • Keurig w/large assortment of pods Homemade cookies
  • TV/DVD combo in every room
  • DVD movie library
  • Luxury linens by Comphy Co.
  • Free laundry service
  • Shampoo, conditioner, body wash Hair dryer
  • Ceiling fans
  • Some rooms with A/C
  • Lots of parking
  • Quiet residential location
  • Fire pit
  • Gas BBQ
  • Pets possible, please inquire first
  • Onsite innkeeper
We are an old-style bed & breakfast that still makes a complete, hot and homemade breakfast. You choose the time between 7:00 – 9:00 a.m. Breakfast-to-go available. Organic and local products are used as much as possible and always the best ingredients available with an emphasis on delicious and healthy. We are located far from the big stores so if you have a very special diet please give us advance notice so supplies can be obtained before your arrival. When the inn was built in 1919 it served as the first hospital in the area and the doctor’s family home, he had a big family with 8 kids. The next owner was a midwife, and many babies came into the world in the house. The next couple of (big) families rented out rooms. And now we have used the house as a B&B for the last 17 years. People sometimes tell me it feels like a happy house and well it should with so many babies coming into the world here and several large, happy families calling it home. The B&B years have certainly seen lots of happy travelers judging by our 5-star rating on Tripadvisor. The property also includes 3 original barns including a chicken coop, complete with chickens for farm-fresh eggs. The house is surrounded by large, old elm trees that provide lots of shade. Although the house is not air conditioned it seldom needs it as our elevation is 6,660′ which provides cooler temps than the surrounding area and lovely, cool nights.

See the Red Brick Inn of Panguitch B&B Expanded Listing on Purple Roofs Here

Gay Friendly Bed and Breakfasts, Hotels, and Vacation Rentals in Utah

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Red Brick Inn of Panguitch B&B – Panguitch, Utah

Red Brick Inn of Panguitch B&B

Periodically we’ll feature one of our properties here to let our readers know about some great gay friendly places to stay:

Comfort, Service and Relaxation are the hallmarks of the Red Brick Inn of Panguitch B&B

Comfort is provided in our themed rooms with luxury linens, fridges and private baths.

Service is a homemade breakfast tailored to your tastes & needs and served at a time of your choosing, 24/7 beverages & snacks and laundry service, all included. Relaxation abounds in our big, shady backyard with a deck, fire pit, hammock & gas BBQ, and comfy public rooms.

AMENITIES

  • Free WiFi
  • Bottled water & soda
  • Special diets accommodated
  • Keurig w/large assortment of pods Homemade cookies
  • TV/DVD combo in every room
  • DVD movie library
  • Luxury linens by Comphy Co.
  • Free laundry service
  • Shampoo, conditioner, body wash Hair dryer
  • Ceiling fans
  • Some rooms with A/C
  • Lots of parking
  • Quiet residential location
  • Fire pit
  • Gas BBQ
  • Pets possible, please inquire first
  • Onsite innkeeper

We are an old-style bed & breakfast that still makes a complete, hot and homemade breakfast. You choose the time between 7:00 – 9:00 a.m. Breakfast-to-go available. Organic and local products are used as much as possible and always the best ingredients available with an emphasis on delicious and healthy. We are located far from the big stores so if you have a very special diet please give us advance notice so supplies can be obtained before your arrival.

When the inn was built in 1919 it served as the first hospital in the area and the doctor’s family home, he had a big family with 8 kids. The next owner was a midwife, and many babies came into the world in the house. The next couple of (big) families rented out rooms. And now we have used the house as a B&B for the last 17 years. People sometimes tell me it feels like a happy house and well it should with so many babies coming into the world here and several large, happy families calling it home. The B&B years have certainly seen lots of happy travelers judging by our 5-star rating on Tripadvisor.

The property also includes 3 original barns including a chicken coop, complete with chickens for farm-fresh eggs. The house is surrounded by large, old elm trees that provide lots of shade. Although the house is not air conditioned it seldom needs it as our elevation is 6,660′ which provides cooler temps than the surrounding area and lovely, cool nights.

See the Red Brick Inn of Panguitch B&B Expanded Listing on Purple Roofs Here

Gay Friendly Bed and Breakfasts, Hotels, and Vacation Rentals in Utah