Planning A Southwest Road Trip

Above, an early morning view of The Mittens and Merrick
 Butte at Monument Valley. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Summer is just around the corner and now is the time to start thinking and planning a vacation trip.

If one is stuck wondering about where to go and do, the East Bay Times as a suggestion: an epic road trip through the Southwest.

They begin it with:

When you’re from California, it’s easy to think that some of the world’s most beautiful and wild, rugged places are right here in our lovely state. But while the Golden State has plenty of incredible scenery to offer, both back in those Wild West days as well as now, the landscapes across America’s Southwest are some of the most spectacular to be found anywhere on the planet.

A road trip is a perfect way to see our favorite special spots in the Southwest — Nevada, Utah and Arizona — where you can see ghost towns, hoodoos, natural arches, sandstone spectacles, dark-sky stars and a really huge hole in the ground.

Before you begin, consider purchasing an annual national parks pass at the first park you enter. That $80 pass gets everyone in your car into every national park for a full year. You don’t have to be an American citizen to buy an annual pass, but if you are, and you’re age 62-plus, buy your lifetime pass for $80 and never again pay to enter a U.S. national park. (Considering that Zion National Park’s entry fee is $35 per car, getting the annual pass is something of a no-brainer.)

To read more, go here.