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Utah Mighty 5 with Southwest Adventure Tours
9:38 am
When Southwest Adventure Tours reached out about sending me to Utah on their Mighty 5 tour, I was thrilled. I had been to Utah before - two years ago when Alex and I first moved to the US and decided to visit a few national parks over Thanksgiving. I loved the parks the first time around, but driving 4+ hours a day left us exhausted that we often had to cut our hikes short. And when we did get around to hiking the parks, I only had Google Image search and TripAdvisor to help me decide which trails were worth hitting up.
My return to Utah would prove very different, not just because Southwest Adventure took over all the planning but I had a guide, Robin, who became my trusty source of information. After driving through Canyonlands, Arches, and Capitol Reef, we ended the tour with Bryce National Park and Zion National Park, my two favorites of the trip.
In Zion, the clouds hung low as thunderstorms loomed near. The mountains in Zion smoldered through the defense fog. Zion is picturesque at every turn, but if you want to know the best hikes and lookouts, then you need to ask someone who knows the park. At Robin’s counsel, some of us opted to hike Angel’s Landing despite the chance of rain. I had seen photos of the view from the top and was determined to reach it. After completing last mile using chains as we navigated the narrow, and rocky “fin” with thousand feet drops on each side, there was nothing more satisfying than standing at the summit when the rain started to pour.
While I often overhear people remarking that Zion was their favorite stop of the trip, I longed to spend more time in Bryce. I had been looking forward to the return to Bryce since my visit there 2 winters ago. There is something magical about the hoo doos in the park, and they looked even more surreal in the early sunlight when Robin took the group out to catch sunrise at Inspiration Point. As our small group cuddled together in the cool morning air, we would point out glimpses of glowing red light that each other had spotted against spires in the amphitheater. Anyone who has ventured on a guided tour knows the quality of the guide can make or break the experience. As a photographer, I want a guide who can answer my questions and give me an experience tailored to my perspective of a photographer. Later on in the day, Robin took us into the canyon for a hike, another activity I had missed out on when I visited Bryce during the winter and was glad to try. It’s one thing to stand at the top of a viewpoint and study the park below, but there’s something about being on the floor of the canyons that makes me feel at one with the place. The spires towered over us as we passed by “Thor’s Hammer” and circled around arches that had formed as the sedimentary rocks eroded. With every step, I remained in awe of Bryce.
Disclaimer: Southwest Adventure Tours invited me to join their Mighty 5 tour as their guest, but they did not request that I write a favorable review or spend way many hours running into the sunset in the Mighty 5.
My return to Utah would prove very different, not just because Southwest Adventure took over all the planning but I had a guide, Robin, who became my trusty source of information. After driving through Canyonlands, Arches, and Capitol Reef, we ended the tour with Bryce National Park and Zion National Park, my two favorites of the trip.
In Zion, the clouds hung low as thunderstorms loomed near. The mountains in Zion smoldered through the defense fog. Zion is picturesque at every turn, but if you want to know the best hikes and lookouts, then you need to ask someone who knows the park. At Robin’s counsel, some of us opted to hike Angel’s Landing despite the chance of rain. I had seen photos of the view from the top and was determined to reach it. After completing last mile using chains as we navigated the narrow, and rocky “fin” with thousand feet drops on each side, there was nothing more satisfying than standing at the summit when the rain started to pour.
While I often overhear people remarking that Zion was their favorite stop of the trip, I longed to spend more time in Bryce. I had been looking forward to the return to Bryce since my visit there 2 winters ago. There is something magical about the hoo doos in the park, and they looked even more surreal in the early sunlight when Robin took the group out to catch sunrise at Inspiration Point. As our small group cuddled together in the cool morning air, we would point out glimpses of glowing red light that each other had spotted against spires in the amphitheater. Anyone who has ventured on a guided tour knows the quality of the guide can make or break the experience. As a photographer, I want a guide who can answer my questions and give me an experience tailored to my perspective of a photographer. Later on in the day, Robin took us into the canyon for a hike, another activity I had missed out on when I visited Bryce during the winter and was glad to try. It’s one thing to stand at the top of a viewpoint and study the park below, but there’s something about being on the floor of the canyons that makes me feel at one with the place. The spires towered over us as we passed by “Thor’s Hammer” and circled around arches that had formed as the sedimentary rocks eroded. With every step, I remained in awe of Bryce.
Disclaimer: Southwest Adventure Tours invited me to join their Mighty 5 tour as their guest, but they did not request that I write a favorable review or spend way many hours running into the sunset in the Mighty 5.
A bump in the road woke me up from my nap in the car. As I slowly come back around, I realized from the different terrain that we were no longer in Moab. Now, we were driving through the desert in a landscape that looked simply jurassic. I had flown to Salt Lake City a few days earlier to embark on the Mighty 5 Tour with Southwest Adventure Tours. Zion, Bryce, Capitol Reef, Arches, and Canyonlands are the five iconic national parks that make for a perfect week-long trip through the state of Utah.
Our 10-person group actually did the trip backwards, beginning in Canyonlands and Arches National Park before driving through Capitol Reef and traversing south until we hit Bryce National Park and Zion National Park before heading back to Salt Lake City. I hadn’t travelled like this before. Typically I travel with a small group of friends or, sometimes with only my camera. In recent years, Alex and I have also taken a liking to guided private tours for just the two of us and our crazy demands to see sunsets and sunrises. But a small group tour for 6 days, including hours spent in the car together as we drive across Utah - it was a first.
In addition to myself, the group consisted of 3 Canadians, two best friends, a couple of international exchange students, and a pair of endearing grandparents who were checking Utah off of their bucket list. This line reads like the introduction to a Hollywood comedy, but for 1 week, this group of people became my travel family. Somehow, this unlikely all over survived the trip with only minor bruises and beautiful memories.
When you meet a fellow traveler, it’s an unspoken social custom to share your stories of the road. Over lunches and dinners, I learned about the Canadians’ hiking trip to Guatemala a few years before, grandma and grandpa had vacationed in Egypt and Israel, and the exchange students had taken a summer in college to backpack in Southeast Asia. These conversations were always followed by questions about possible future trips, and exchanging ideas for how we could use our next vacation days to our advantage. Between chats, I instinctively reach for my passport and pat the pocket to check that it’s there. Over long drives between parks, we learned about the each other’s families, childhoods, and love for adventure. Not before long, I was looking through photos of family members on smartphones.
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| An incomplete group photo. |
Follow Southwest Adventure Tours online to see more snaps from my trip:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/SouthwestAdventureToursLLC
Instagram: @swatours
Twitter: @swatours
Disclaimer: I was invited to join the tour as a guest of Southwest Adventures, but all opinions written, friendships made, and knees scraped are my own.
In the middle of the rice field, I click away at the shutter with dedication, blown away by the pristine beauty of Ubud. A quiet thud a few steps ahead beckons me to look up from the viewfinder. A coconut had fallen from the tree and landed on the narrow dirt path that separates one owner’s field from another.
My first inclination is to sigh in relief that the coconut didn’t land on my head, but before I could, a farmer jumps out from the field and runs up to the freshly ripened fruit.
“Want a coconut?” He chops the fruit open with his knife and smiles at me.
Traveling is a big part of my job, but traveling for work is not nearly the same as taking a vacation. While this summer has been full of some amazing trips abroad for work, I was starting to feel burned out from living out of a suitcase for the better part of 3 months. When I found myself in Indonesia in September, I knew exactly what I needed to unwind - a quiet week in Bali with a few friends.
When the folks at Kensington Tours heard about my trip, they kindly offered for me to join them on a day trip to Ubud. I was still buzzing from participating in their luxury 3-day tour in Portugal this summer and immediately accepted the offer.
Ubud is the arts center of the Indonesian island. Removed from the beachheads and nightclubs of Kuta and Seminyak, this is where visitors come to soak up the culture and arts of Bali. If I had just one day in Bali, I would spend it here: learning about the traditions of the Balinese, browsing the art galleries and markets in center Ubud, taking in the scenery of the rice fields, and visiting the Royal Palace.
When the folks at Kensington Tours heard about my trip, they kindly offered for me to join them on a day trip to Ubud. I was still buzzing from participating in their luxury 3-day tour in Portugal this summer and immediately accepted the offer.
Ubud is the arts center of the Indonesian island. Removed from the beachheads and nightclubs of Kuta and Seminyak, this is where visitors come to soak up the culture and arts of Bali. If I had just one day in Bali, I would spend it here: learning about the traditions of the Balinese, browsing the art galleries and markets in center Ubud, taking in the scenery of the rice fields, and visiting the Royal Palace.
Entrance to a family temple
Our tour guide explaining the layout of a traditional Balinese home
The silversmith at work
Bali is famous for its handicrafts so we started off the day to see the works of the woodcarver, the silversmith, and the batik fabric-maker. Along the way, we became fascinated with the home of the silversmith. Occupying a traditional Balinese home, the compound of the silversmith consisted of 4 pavilions and a family temple.
Hinduism is the predominant religion on the island and you cannot go far in Bali without seeing a temple. There are family temples, village temples, rice field temples, mountain temples; in fact, it is often said that there are more temples per square mile than anywhere else in the world.
One of these famous temples is situated in the Sacred Monkey Forest, home to over 600 long-tailed macaques. On our visit, these monkeys played, swam, and fought over the food from visitors. While I was a bit afraid of the tribes of monkeys, the boys seemed unfazed, taking turns feeding peanuts to the animals. The Monkey Forest is more than a show of playful animals, but also a cultural sanctuary that shows harmony between human and nature.
Temple entrance and statue with an offering for the gods
The boys inquiring about worship of the dead
Observing our genetic cousins at the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary
Left: entrance to the Ubud Royal Palace | Right: farmer splitting a ripe coconut
The highlight of the day was a meal at Sari Organik. This all organic restaurant overlooking the rice paddies of outer Ubud was a photographer’s dream. Throughout the meal, I was glued to the restaurant patio that looked out to where the fields where the lush green met the blue sky.
Photographers spends years training their eye - their ability to read light, compose a picture, and translate their vision into an image. On any given trip, I come home with a few thousand images easily. But I believe some moments are not meant to be captured, they are meant to be lived.
Under the clear sky of Ubud, overlooking the exotic scenery of island known as paradise, spending the week with 3 close friends, and enjoying the cultural immersion from our generous tour guide - it was an experience that no photograph could do justice.
This blog post was made possible through my partnership with Kensington Tours, but they did not request that I write a favorable review or have a near miss with a coconut falling on my head.
