A few weeks ago, we packed up everything we’d need for a week’s worth of camping and stuffed it into our backpacks and headed off to Southern Utah. Ever since we stopped there on our big roadtrip last fall, it’s been calling us back. This time, we were able to hit the two national parks we didn’t get much time in our last trip: Capitol Reef & Canyonlands. They’re much quieter places than Arches or Zion (while we love both of those, the remoteness of these two less-visited parks was so peaceful). Our first day, we hung out with a lovely couple in Capitol Reef and shot some amazing stormy evening desert adventure wedding session for them before they jetted off to Washington State for their wedding day, which our good friend Liz shot.
Then we headed out to camp for the rest of the week! We had some incredible star-watching, a great deal of sunrise and sunset hiking (it was too hot to do anything in the middle of the day other than lie in our tent!) and a LOT of time driving down bumpy dirt roads to stunning views in the middle of nowhere in our rental pick up truck. We loved our time in Utah, and every minute of it was magical, from the crystal clear views of the Milky Way over Dead Horse Point, dinners of instant ramen off the bed of the rental truck while watching the sun set, to seeing thousand year old petroglyphs carved into canyon walls and archaeological ruins in a remote desert basin, to a sunrise hike out to a mind-boggling arch on our last day, where we watched the sun come up over the gorgeous Capitol Wash with no other humans in sight.
We didn’t make it out to the Great Gallery on this trip, but it’s definitely top of the bucket list, so you’ll have to check back in next year 😉 We’re already dreaming of when we’ll be heading back to the Southwest for our Grand Canyon trip this fall for another adventure session!
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