Utah Van Life Day 1-4

Day 1 -4 Utah Van Life

Day 1

We landed around 12:30 p.m. in Salt Lake City. Our first stop was to pick up the rental van from VanCraft Rentals. We made an Amazon order to be delivered to Whole Foods for us to pick up (some comforts we enjoyed i.e. a wool blanket). Our next stop was groceries. Finally drove to the first overnight spot, Horse Canyon Rest Stop.

We unpacked and attempted to organize things and went promptly to bed.

Day 2

Our first full day was at Arches National Park. We camped at Devils Garden in Arches. Set up “camp”. Had lunch at the site and hiked the fin behind the camp site. We also enjoyed how people claimed their campsite (last photo)

Fin behind campsite you could walk up and on

We drove to Windows Trail, hiked the mile.

Second hike was Double Arch

Third hike was to Skyline Arch.

I actually wouldn’t call them hikes, as most are just walk a bit to view. Returned to van to call it a day

Day 3

Had to pivot on today’s hike plan due to a rainy morning. We drove to Island of the Sky District in Canyonlands. Beautiful blue skies greeted us.

Returned from Canyonlands and decided to hike from our campsite to Tapestry and Broken Arch, a 2.5 mile loop.

After that we called it a day.

Day 4

We woke to a beautiful sunrise.

After breakfast it was time to hike Delicate Arch, after sunrise though to avoid the crowds. It was 3.27 miles.

Our next hike required a 7 mile ride on a dirt road, bumpy at times. We did The Tower hike trail. 2.7 miles and it is by far one of my favorite trails ever!

Our day concluded with helping out a family. They had parked their RV at the Sand Dunes parking lot and didn’t realize it was an out back hike. This was the hike we did the other day but as a loop from campground. It was dark when they approached us and asked which trail they needed to get back on to get to their RV. Did I say it was dark? It was and there were two children with them, a five and three year old. We told them they would have to backtrack, but we would drive them to their RV. They declined at first and said the dad would run down the road to the RV, not in the dark you won’t. So they relented and we drove them to their RV.

After that it was time to eat and go to bed.

So my thoughts so far…

Learning about the van, what rattles, how to use the overnight heater is a learning curb. The fridge is small and no oven limits our cooking and makes grocery shopping happen a lot. Get ioverlander app, helps us to find water stations and campsites.

The parks are busy, more than we expected them to be. There are lots of rude people, not respecting nature, going off trail, parking like entitled idiots hence the teacher look may have appeared a time or two. Also people aren’t prepared for hiking in some of the terrain, it scares me.

Be prepared to live without cell service for stretches. We do have a garmin inreach in case we need to contact anyone for emergencies.

Bathroom walks at 1 a.m. are worth it for the night sky viewing!