Wandering Through Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks

Above, Checkerboard Mesa at Zion National Park. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

If you've never been to a national park, you would be doing yourself a big favor by visiting Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks in Utah. This year is especially a good time to do so, after all, it's the centennial of the National Park Service!

Travel + Leisure has posted an article on wandering through both parks.

Here's a snippet (on Zion):

The dawn light reveals my true location, deep inside a walled valley of soaring red stone. Something about gigantic colored rocks activates the bad poet in all of us, so I’m tempted to say the stone peaks “stand sentinel” and constitute a kind of “fortress.” (What they really resemble is a mammoth jaw with colossal, eroded molars.) My goal this morning is to hike the trail to Angels Landing, a rock formation I’d heard described by a young woman in the city I had set out from—Las Vegas, the garish, unlikely base camp for so many road trips into southern Utah—as a “religious experience that’ll make you wet your pants.” How could I not be intrigued?

If you are intrigued by the prospect of seeing natural beauty, to read more, go here.