Tom Passavant

Beyond the dazzling attractions of the national parks, there is another, perhaps more powerful allure to southern Utah. It's the almost incomprehensible vastness of the place, and the notion that there is a huge amount of terrain to be explored. We live in a country where so many of our treasures--artistic, historical, cultural--are locked down and under surveillance, and where our sense of discovery is often limited to finding a really good parking place at the mall. Yet here are several million acres of American landscape that are wide open to anyone with hiking boots and a decent map. Ruins of ancient civilizations lie in the sun unmolested; pottery shards and pictograms are there for the looking. Secret vistas, hidden canyons and untold ways to get yourself lost or injured or killed abound out here.

"You go off hiking for hours and you see maybe two other people and you start thinking, Boy, it's crowded out here today," said Peter Shaw, a visitor from Lexington, Massachusetts, who was roaming the famous slot canyons of Escalante with his son, Jeremy, last spring. "There's so much mystery to all this terrain."

"There are Anasazi ruins all over the place that no one has catalogued," added a friend of mine who lives in Moab, the mountain biking mecca in the southeastern part of the state. He spends weeks every year hiking and camping in the more remote parts of the region. Plenty of people want to keep secrets, too. He told me about a spectacular vista overlooking the Colorado that's easy to get to--provided you ask for it by a very precise name. Otherwise, he says, the rangers will deny it exists.

It's possible to rent a car in Las Vegas or Salt Lake City or Grand Junction, Colorado, and hit all five parks in a week of furious driving. YouÕll be exhausted, though, and miss a lot. On our most recent trip, we traveled a huge clockwise circle around southern Utah, starting in Moab at Arches and Canyonlands, and then visiting Zion, Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef, in about two weeks. Many people opt to visit only two or three parks in one swing.. We made our trip in mid-April, which along with May is an ideal time to go, since it avoids the blast-furnace heat of summer and the blizzards of winter. Late September and October are equally fine, too. But note that Bryce may have some snow as late as May or as early as October. For suggested itineraries, see "Getting Around."

Whenever you go, remember to walk or hike or raft as often as possible. As Edward Abbey put it in his classic memoir of the region, Desert Solitaire, "So long as [visitors] are unwilling to crawl out of their cars, they will not discover the treasures of the national parks."

Arches
When it comes to wind- and water-sculpted rock, natural arches evoke the most awe and wonder. Over 2,000 of them, mostly red sandstone, along with numerous improbably balanced rocks, are scattered throughout the 76,000-acre park, whose entrance is five miles north of Moab. They range from three-foot slots to such famous spans as North and South Window, Delicate Arch and Landscape Arch, the biggest at 306 feet across. Many of these wonders can be seen from the single road that winds through the park, but short hikes to several of them let you stand right underneath. Be sure to come here in early morning or around sunset--it will be chilly, but the way the light sets the rocks on fire will warm your soul.

Canyonlands
The largest of the five Utah national parks, and at 337,000 acres, nearly five times bigger than neighboring Arches, Canyonlands is an upside-down wedding cake of rock layers carved by the Green and Colorado rivers. Dramatic overlooks are at Grand View Point and at Dead Horse Point State Park, where the Colorado River inscribes a gigantic loop 2,000 feet below. While the roads to these sites are paved, a four-wheel-drive vehicle is necessary to explore much of the park. Many visitors opt to take one of the tours offered by the numerous Moab-based rafting and Jeep outfitters that let you get down into the canyons for a few hours or several days. The parkÕs beautiful southern extension, called The Needles, offers ancient pictograms, rock climbing and excellent short hikes along an isolated but well-paved road.

Zion
If Canyonlands is about looking down, Zion is all about looking up. Set in the southwest corner of the state, next to the charming little town of Springdale, Zion is a model of a well-run national park: well tended and very well organized, with an exceptional visitors center. The 146,000-acre park is centered on a six-mile-long valley, accessible only by shuttle buses and cut by the North Fork of the Virgin River. Monolithic slabs of rock with names like the Court of the Patriarchs leap thousands of feet straight up from the valley floor. Many of the hikes here are abruptly vertical, notably the 3,000-foot slog up to Angels Landing. Another famous trail is all wet: Zion Narrows requires wading right up the shallow river, through a slender canyon.

Bryce Canyon
About 90 miles north of Zion, 35,000-acre Bryce Canyon is a vast amphitheater filled with eroded rock in the most fanciful forms imaginable, including thousands of reddish-orange sandstone pillars, or hoodoos. You look down on them from a single 18-mile paved road that runs out and back along the edge of the ridge, with the hoodoos exposed on the east side as though a giant golfing god had taken huge divots and peeled back the landscape. A hike down into the hoodoos on one of the well-marked trails is practically mandatory--try the Queen's Garden Trail, a moderate walk of 1.8 miles.

Capitol Reef
The newest of the five national parks (it was anointed in 1971, just a month after Arches), Capitol Reef, north of Bryce Canyon, defies easy categorization, offering a little bit of the scenery that all the other parks do, and an even greater sense of isolation. The 241,000-acre reserve is defined by the Waterpocket Fold, a hundred-mile-long breaking wave of rock running north-south. Along its base is a wilderness of canyons and cliffs. A 12-mile scenic drive leads south from the visitors center and includes the remains of a Mormon pioneer community called Fruita.