Adventure out West

If finding adventure in the national parks system is your thing, there's plenty of bang for your traveling buck in Utah.

Side trips to Arizona are just icing on the cake.

Zion National Park

www.nps.gov/zion/

Arches National Park

www.nps.gov/arch/

Antelope Canyon Navajo Tours

navajotours.com

Redtail Aviation

redtailaviation.com

My wife, Susan, and I took an extended spring break vacation to the Southwest and were able to hike in three national parks -- Zion National Park, Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park -- in Utah. We also took an hour airplane tour of Canyonlands, which allows visitors to view some of the 200 arches in the park. That's more arches than there are in Arches National Park.

We also made stops at Bryce Canyon Park and Capitol Reef National Park in Utah and Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. A side trip to a slot canyon outside Zion National Park was also a bonus.

In all, we hiked over a dozen trails, some up to five miles round- trip and others as short as one-half mile. Picking two of the favorites was difficult.

Zion National Park, Utah

Delicate Arch Trail may be the most popular trail in Zion. It's a three-mile, round-trip hike with an elevation gain of 500 feet.

The start of the trail is wide, well maintained and has little elevation gain over a half mile. The fun begins when hikers traverse a steep slickrock slab for about one-half mile. Once at the top, the hike is a bit easier because most of the elevation gain is behind hikers.

Then the fun begins.

For the last 200 yards, the trail follows a ledge that is at least three-feet-wide, but no more than six-feet-wide, that has been sandblasted out of the rock. Over the last 100 yards the drop off is well over 100 feet. Just past the ledge is Delicate Arch, which sits on one side of a natural amphitheatre.

The view from the end of the trail is spectacular. There are plenty of places to sit and enjoy the view. To get under the 65-foot tall arch, one must climb or slide down a rock ledge and then carefully walk around on a steep downward slope to the arch. A fall here would not end well.

This hike is best in the spring or fall and bring plenty of water and sunscreen as there is no shade on the trail.

Upper Antelope Canyon, Ariz.

This is a short guided hike, but it may be one of the prettiest and interesting short hikes in the country. It costs $48 per person.

Antelope Canyon is a slot canyon on the Navajo Reservations about two hours south of Zion National Park in Page, Ariz. It's popular with photographers, and several years ago photographer Peter Lik sold a print shot from the canyon for $6.5 million to a private collector.

Antelope used to use the canyon as a short cut to a nearby river, and thus the English name. The canyon was formed by flash floods and the constant flooding has made the walls of the cork-screw canyon smooth. The entire hike requires no climbing.

The trip begins with a three-mile trip in a modified pickup from the park office and ends at the entrance of a curved narrow slit at the base of the cliffs. The temperature drops a few degrees as you wind around inside the canyon. Some sections are wide and bright, while others are smaller and cave-like.

One thing that doesn't change is the beautiful color of the rock. The highlight of the hike is the beam of sun light that shines down from above at certain places in the canyon.

This is one adventure where you don't want to leave your camera at home.

Paul Nielsen can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @nwapaul

Sports on 04/02/2015

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