Our journey across southern Utah has now taken us to all five of the state’s spectacular national parks. After Zion and Bryce Canyon we made an overnight stop at Capitol Reef National Park, then settled into Moab for a few days to visit the Canyonlands and Arches parks.

My mom and dad truly love these parks, and it’s been fun to spend time with them and share their enthusiasm. The natural beauty here is incredible, and each of the five parks has quite a distinct personality.

Jim and I have done some incredible hikes through these parks, concluding our visit yesterday with the toughest one of the week. We completed a 7.2 mile loop through Arches National Park, including a segment defined as a “primitive trail,” marked by signs warnings of “difficult hiking.”

Here in the litigious United States, signs like that don’t scare us too much. But we soon found ourselves in some surprisingly precarious positions. At one point we had to slide across a crazy narrow, slippery ledge with nothing to hold onto, virtually no place to put your feet, etc. For several minutes on that ledge I found myself fairly terrified to continue ahead and equally afraid to go back. I eventually gritted my teeth and got through it, but I do feel like I was one little slip away from a deathly plunge into a rocky canyon. I guess adventure can still be found, even here in lawyerly America.

While Utah is incredibly beautiful, it’s mostly not a place for epicurean pleasures. Food has largely been mediocre, and obnoxious Mormon-insired liquor regulations make it hard to get a decent cocktail. But Moab has proved to be a little oasis with a plethora of cute shops, adventure outfits, and a couple pretty decent restaurants. And to our great surprise, the town is livened up this week by colorful rainbow flags and banners proclaiming “Moab Gay Adventure Week.” Who knew?

If you were Mark and Jim and had the chance to hike the Fairyland Loop, would you pass it up? I didn’t think so, and neither did we.

Our second stop in Utah was Bryce Canyon National Park. We got to the town near the park entrance in time for lunch and, after lunch, Mark & I headed out for an afternoon hike. The good news was that at around 8,500 feet in elevation, the weather here was a huge improvement over the mid-90s we’d experienced in the afternoon in Zion. And besides just the name, the Fairyland Loop seemed perfect: a “strenuous” 8-mile loop that would take maybe four or five hours.

We didn’t really know what to expect, but discovered a world unlike anything we’d ever seen anywhere. Erosion has created thousands of “hoodoos”, spires created when relatively soft rock is topped by harder stones that protect the lower rock from erosion. While Bryce Canyon supposedly has the world’s largest concentration of hoodoos, Cappadocia in Turkey is also famous for its hoodoos so we may have to get there soon to compare them.

At any rate, it was a spectacular hike; it seemed as though every five minutes we’d turn a corner and gasp all over again at the beauty. And one of the nice things of doing a pretty challenging hike in the afternoon is that there were only a few other hikers on the trail so we had it largely to ourselves.

Oh, and one other nice little aspect of our hike: we have drop-off and pickup services. Mark’s parents drop us at the trailhead, we estimate our time of return and – after their own driving tour of the park – they’re there to pick us up. Being chauffeured after a tough hike is a good thing.

Finally, you may have noticed the lack of pictures of great food. That’s not an oversight.

Our western swing has begun. After visiting family and friends in the midwest and on the east coast, we’re spending a little over a week in Utah visiting the great national parks out here. Mark’s parents have spent years telling us we should come out here, so now that we have time we’re finally doing it. And they’re here, too, acting as drivers and tour guides for us.

It started with a flight to Las Vegas and “date night” for us after weeks of being with lots of other people. There’s not much you can say about Vegas that hasn’t already been said: over the top, artificial, a looming environmental disaster (a major metropolis and tourist center with hundreds of green golf courses in the desert?) But it’s a great place to start the Utah tour from and it’s always … interesting. We even made new friends, Ron and Ania, a wonderful London couple (she by way of Poland) who we met over lunch. They’re touring the U.S. from California to South Dakota and back, having put over 3,000 miles on their rental car in just a couple of weeks. Wow!

After a tapas dinner at one of the many good and great restaurants here, we got up the next morning and hit the road. First stop, Zion National Park. We stayed two nights there, and spent our one full day on an invigorating (!) hike up to Angel’s Landing. Here’s how Lonely Planet describes the hike:

“Among the harder trails, the 2.5 mile [five miles round trip] Angels Landing Trail (1,490 foot ascent) is the one everyone’s heard of – and fears. At times the trail is no more than five feet wide, with 1,500 foot drop-offs to the canyon floor on both sides.” It goes on to describe the chain-assisted penultimate climb and the even steeper final push to the top. But then, the views. Lonely Planet doesn’t mention – but signs on the trail make very clear – that since 2004 alone, six people have died on the trail. Even more reason we had to try it, right?

So that was it, we have to try. One of the notable features of the climb was how many Europeans were on the trail; it seemed as though half the people were speaking French or German, with a smattering of Spanish thrown in. It occurred to us that the Americans were all on big bus tours that couldn’t remotely stop for a day to do the hike, and the vast majority were in no shape to do it, either. (When we asked at our hotel how to get to a store to buy water and food for the trail and then on into the park, we were told to catch the shuttle bus right out of the hotel, get off at the first stop to buy groceries, and then reboard the bus to get to the park. “Can we just walk to the grocery store?” we asked. “Well, I suppose,” she answered. Turns out it was a five minute walk – and she was recommending the bus. At that time of the morning we’d have waited 10 or 15 minutes to avoid a five minute walk.)

From here it’s on to Bryce Canyon. So far, at least, being a tourist in the U.S. is pretty good.