Ah Northern Utah – you just don’t get the credit you deserve!
If you take a second to imagine Utah, I’m betting what pops in your mind are images of the magnificent Arches National Park, or perhaps the giant walls of Zion National Park, or even the odd and fantastic looking hoodoos of Bryce Canyon. If you’re a skier, maybe you see the perfect white slopes of Snowbird, Brighton, Deer Valley, or any of the other seemingly endless winter-sports destinations. What you probably don’t see, however, are the beautiful rocky green mountains of the Wasatch mountain range in summer, and I would offer that you’re missing out! I personally think – and I recognize this is blasphemous to some people – that if you dream of visiting Colorado, where you ACTUALLY dream of visiting, is Utah. There, I said it. 🙂 Much like the Rockies, the mountains of northern Utah are green and rugged, with stunning meadows that seem to have flowers blooming continuously in the warmer months. There are mountain lakes, aspen trees; all the great sights of the West, and I haven’t even mentioned the desert area of southern Utah.
Okay, okay, enough of my sales pitch about Utah.
To the point above, on our trip out to Utah this year I wanted Holly to get a solid feel for the entire state (she’d only been to Arches National Park, which was really a side trip from Arizona / Nevada). We did quite a bit of exploring around – I’m pretty sure we hiked more in those two weeks than we had the previous year – and got to see some amazing views, including a moose! As I mentioned last week (which if you haven’t seen the post from last week, I’d encourage you to check it out here. It was so much fun), the whole area was quite smoky while we were there, so I ended up shooting a lot in infrared to try to cut through it as best I could. The picture starting this series, however, is from my trip back in 2019, which I some how failed to post back then!
Anyway, I hope you enjoy, and I hope this gives you a sense of what “the rest of Utah” is all about!
–Dan Thompson
