#Write31Days 08 • Utah

Capitol Reef National Park • Zion National Park • Mill Creek Canyon
"This is the place!" Brigham Young declared on July 24, 1047 to Latter-day Saint pioneers when they reached the Salt Lake Valley. Most of Utah's land area is rural; most of its population is urban. Emigration Canyon specifically might have excited those early Saints, but for the rest of the world, the entire state of Utah is the place for breathtaking natural wonders. Even in terms of the intermountain West, the "Mighty 5" Zion, Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, and Bryce Canyon National Parks are exceptionally stunning and endlessly surprising. Utah claims the greatest snow on earth—light, fluffy powder that's easy to shovel after a storm, that attracts both local residents and tourists to the ski resorts. Utah's diverse ecology and geology ranges from the Wasatch Range on the western edge of the Rockies, to high desert {some of the precipitation falls as snow} in the northeast, to the Great Salt Lake, to a low elevation portion of the Mojave Desert in the southwest.

There's always an easy option to get away from the cities and suburbs where most of the non-rural population lives and works and into nature for a day trip, a half day, or a weekend. There's so much more I can't describe, so please read about Utah online, or best yet, spend some time there yourself.

Later in this series I'll blog about Salt Lake City.