11 Must See Spots in Utah
Recently Dusten and I took a road trip around Utah, and I was amazed at how beautiful every region of the state is. No matter what area you go to, the scenery is so unique and stunning. While I definitely believe you could find a photo spot in any random area, these are the top 10 spots that stood out to me on our trip.
-Salt Lake City. The capital city of Utah is definitely worth checking out on your visit. It features a beautiful capital building on top of a hill overlooking both the downtown area and the beautiful mountains and salt lake. The downtown itself has a ton of cool spots to eat and beautiful architecture. Regardless of your religious beliefs, the Mormon headquarters are in downtown Salt Lake City and they are stunning buildings and include a scenic rooftop view that is open to the public to see.
-Bonneville Salt Flats. This is such a secluded spot, but totally worth making a day trip to see. It’s near a rest stop along a long stretch of highway just outside of Nevada. You’re able to drive out onto the salt flats though and it’s stunning to see how open everything is. There is also a little turquoise pond out towards the mountains that makes for a cool photo.
-Zion National Park. No list about Utah would be complete without including Zion National Park. Perhaps one of the most famous national parks in the US (and my favorite so far), this park is stunning to see in every season.
-Great Salt Lake / Spiral Jetty. If you get a chance to check out the Spiral Jetty and Great Salt Lake, definitely take it! I’ll admit, it wasn’t originally on my list of places to see on our trip, but my sister-in-law really wanted to take us and I’m so glad she did. The Spiral Jetty is best viewed from atop the hill so you can see the full exhibit. If you walk out towards the lake you’ll be shocked to see that it’s actually a beautiful pink color due to the shrimp that survive in the salty waters.
*As a side note, A LOT of people mentioned the area having a strong smell during the warmer months. However, we visited in the middle of winter when it was freezing out and there was no scent at all.
-Goblin Valley State Park. One of the coolest state parks I’ve ever been to. If it was larger, I’d imagine this would be a national park as well. The park is pretty secluded on the way down towards Moab and is about 3 miles wide filled with these cool hoodoos that you can hike around and take photos with. If we had time I would have loved to do the full 3 mile hike that take you down towards a cave. We visited in the mid-afternoon and the lighting was pretty harsh, so ideally this would be a nice sunset spot for photos.
-Hanksville. This is a short ways away from Goblin Valley and it’s crazy to see how drastically the landscape changes in a 45 minute drive. The Mars Desert Research Center is located in the Hanksville desert, and we found this insane spot pretty close by.
-Canyonlands National Park. Another one of my favorite national parks. We actually skipped this one on our first trip to Utah, but I’m so glad we visited this most recent time. You could ideally spend a few days here just checking out the different canyon hikes, but if you’re on a time crunch, it’s easy to stop at the different lookout points and still get an amazing view.
-Bryce Canyon National Park. Another insane national park is Bryce Canyon. Bryce is so unique with it’s vibrant orange hoodoos and cliffs, and was even more stunning in the snow. It’s also insane how quickly the landscape changes here. The drive to Bryce and even the entrance/main road of the park is through a pine tree-filled forest, which during winter looked like the epitome of Christmas with all of the snow around. As you drive to the different lookout points, it opens up into vibrant orange canyons. We unfortunately didn’t have a ton of time here, but we checked out sunset point and did a very short zig zagging hike into a canyon.
-Arches National Park. Another World famous park in Utah is Arches. As the name suggests, it’s filled with stunning red rock arches, hoodoos, and cliffs. This is another spot you could honestly spend a week at just checking out the different hikes, but if you’re short on time, the Double Arches are a very short hike with an amazing arch view.
-Mystic Hot Springs. This super unique spot in Utah features a natural hot spring that was built up to include several bathtubs and a large soaking spring to relax in and take some photos. They also have a few old buses (and cabins) that they’ve converted into places to rent out for the night. It’s about $20 a person and they don’t allow alcohol, but it was definitely one of the highlights of our trip.
-Lake Powell. This photo is actually from the Arizona side of Lake Powell, however this is beautiful spot right on the Utah/Arizona border that features a winding lake surrounded by stunning white and red rock cliff and slot canyons. We’ve only been during the winter, but I’m definitely planning to go during the Summer at some point so we can rent a boat and explore Lake Powell. They offer water sports, stand up paddle boarding, and of course swimming.
xoxo
