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Just a few weeks ago over Labor Day weekend, Kushal and I took our relatively newly outdoorsy-fied selves (thanks, California!) across state borders into Arizona for a little nature themed getaway. If there’s a domestic destination where natural wonders are ripe for the picking, it’s the Arizona-Utah-Nevada cluster. Every national park in the region is beautiful and unique enough to must-see! and to say that there’s a lot of them is an understatement! With only a long weekend at our disposal, we picked a few highlights to hit up this time. The taste of the southwestern desert was all too short, and we can’t wait to go back to see more in future trips. Needless to say, we made sure to document the trip for the blawg and I’ll be sharing a full itinerary in a post next week, but I figured I’d share two of our favorite stops- Bryce Canyon National Park and Sedona- in two separate blog posts this week because… well, we kinda lost control with the camera clicking and I’m the fat cat that wants to share alllllll of them clicks. #sorrynotsorry

If you’ve googled Utah’s Bryce Canyon (or just scroll below!) and seen otherworldly rock formations that look like they belong in the next space exploration movie, it’s because that’s really what it looks like! As you drive through the park, you’re circling around a central arena of ‘hoodoos’- the geological term for the funky looking red limestone structures that are tapered at the top from centuries of erosive forces. As we hiked downwards through the network of hoodoos and looked up from below, it blew our minds that water once flowed at such great heights, although snow and ice during the winters continue to shape them still. It’s a truly overwhelming experience to walk around amidst the gigantic structures, even more so if a certain Mesozoic era loving husband exclaims more than a few times that dinosaurs once roamed here too. :)

We spent an amazing afternoon at Bryce Canyon before driving back to our Airbnb in Page, but not before making pitstops at the really cool striped sandstone hills of Grand Escalante National Monument and finally, the Wahweap reservation for a pink sunset over Lake Powell. To watch the moon rise over an expansive pink landscape was the perfect unordinary end to a perfect unordinary day!