Musings of an Empty Nest Mom

The first thing that struck me about Canyonlands National Park wasn’t what I saw—it was what I didn’t.

I didn’t see crowds lined up at overlooks. I didn’t hear tour buses unloading visitors. There weren’t souvenir shops around every corner or long lines waiting for the perfect photo.

Instead, there was quite.

As we drove into the park just outside of Moab, Utah, I found myself staring out the windshield in disbelief. Massive walls of red rock rose from the desert floor like ancient monuments. Definitely nothing like this in the Northeast!

Coming from the lush green forests and mountains of upstate New York, the desert felt almost foreign. There were no towering pines, no rus...

Capitol Reef National Park isn’t usually the first Utah park people think about. In fact, I had never heard of it until we started doing some research about the Mighty Five. Most travelers rush toward Zion’s towering walls or Bryce Canyon’s famous hoodoos. Capitol Reef may be as a stop along the way for some. I very thankful we spent as much time here as we did in Br...

Some places are difficult to describe because they don’t resemble anything you’ve seen before. Bryce Canyon falls squarely into that category. Prior to our trip to Utah, I’d didn’t know much about this National Park, the second of five that we visited in May. The park is famous for it’s hoodoos—tall, narrow rock spires that seem to rise out of the earth like giant sandcastles...

There are some places that photographs simply cannot prepare you for. Zion National Park was one of those places for me. This was the only park we spent two days in, AND returned to for a few hours prior to heading back to Las Vegas for our flight home.

I had seen some pictures before the trip—the towering red cliffs, the winding Virgin River, the narrow canyon walls st...