Petyo Lake - Banff National Park (Canada)

If you enjoy my posts, please consider signing up below to get email notifications of my latest posts. I will not share your email.

Have you ever looked at a beautiful picture and thought to yourself, I want to go there? Have you ever convinced yourself that you actually need to go there and then planned an entire vacation around getting to be in the middle of the picture you saw? Confession – I do this all the time…. For me, a picture can be worth a thousand miles to convince myself it’s real and to be able to see beyond the edges of the picture. It doesn’t really have anything to do with taking a picture of the place myself, although of course I do; it’s more having the memory of being there, in the picture, and the adventure that it took to get there.

Here are some of my adventures that have been the result of seeing a picture. You’ll notice there are several, and that I am a sucker for red rocks that have interesting shapes. Maybe it’s a disease, maybe it’s an iron deficiency… But, I hope I’m not alone in feeling called to these places, and that these pictures might inspire you for an adventure of your own.

Antelope Canyon

Antelope Canyon is a beautiful slot canyon near Page, Arizona. It’s heavily photographed, so chances are you’ve seen an image similar to this one. The canyon goes on and on like this. It is one of the prettiest places I have ever walked through. Each turn reveals another incredible view.

This is a very accessible canyon, but you do need to be able to climb up and down steps. The slot canyon is fairly wide (at least for a slot canyon). There is no need to turn your body to squeeze past any sections. And all of the roads you need to get here are paved. The catch to this canyon is there is a cost to visit. Slot canyons are very dangerous when flash floods occur, and in 1997, a flood killed 11 hikers inside this canyon. To prevent future deaths, the Navajo who live on this land decided to close the canyon to the general public and control when visitors enter based on tour availability.

Monument Valley

Sometimes you are close enough that you just have to add a bit of extra driving and spend the night to see something cool. I plan my family’s road trips and as long as I can find some fun things to do wherever we go, no one realizes that I added a destination. Thus was the case with Monument Valley. We were driving in-between Arches National Park and the Grand Canyon, and Monument Valley was pretty close to the roads we would have been on had we not stopped. The park itself is amazing, but you’ll want a higher clearance vehicle as the dirt road is only semi-maintained. On our way out of the park, we had one more stop. Do you recognize this view? Mile marker 13 along U.S. 163 is where Forest Gump decides to stop running.

Badlands National Park - Notch Trail

I’ve been married for 15 years, and my husband has started to pick up on my secret underlying goals while planning a trip. I have a thing for Badlands National Park. It’s difficult for me to drive past this park when we are heading west on I-90. It’s this awe-inspiring park, it’s never busy, and there are almost always mountain sheep and prairie dogs right alongside the road. While planning a road trip out to Yosemite National Park, I suggested we stop along the way at Badlands again. Chris pushed back on this pretty hard due to the number of times we’ve stopped before. But the thing was, I’d seen a picture of this ladder on Notch Trail, and realized that we hadn’t done this hike yet. I really wanted to climb up this ladder to see how difficult it was, and to see the view from the top that I could only imagine. We ended up negotiating this hike for adding a second stop in Wall Drug.

For more information on hiking in the Badlands, see my blog post Traveling through Badlands National Park

Big Badlands Overlook - Badlands National Park

Grand Canyon National Park

I traveled to the Grand Canyon with my parents when I was 14, and I fell in love. I saw the South Rim from multiple view points and even had a chance to hike down the South Kaibab Trail to Cedar Ridge. But the trail changes quite a bit after this point, and pictures similar to those below created such a yearning to see more that I trained for 6 months to prepare for a Rim-to-Rim-to-Rim hike. Despite this being the hardest hike of our lives, this is such a special place that we found ourselves back at the bottom of this canyon less than 2 years later.

If you’re interested in more of this story, see my blog post: Woes of Falling in Love with a Very Deep Hole

Grand Canyon South Kaibab Trail (about half-way down to the river)

Grand Canyon South Kaibab - Skeleton Point

Bottom of Grand Canyon - Colorado River - Silver Bridge

Bottom of Grand Canyon near Phantom Ranch

Bright Angel Trail at the Bottom of the Grand Canyon - Vishnu Schist

Grand Canyon North Kaibab Trail between Roaring Canyon and Supai Tunnel

Arches National Park

When I was a freshman in college at Arizona State, I ended up in Arches for my first time while on a trip with my church. The whole park was magical and we hiked out to this stunning arch that we ate a picnic underneath. I never thought to ask what the name of the arch was, but over the years I remembered being at this arch and how peaceful it felt.

We traveled out to Arches as a family in 2015, and we searched for this arch without ever finding it again. Afterwards, I googled and scoured websites looking for pictures of this arch that no longer felt real because I couldn’t find it. The next year, I ended up back at Arches, this time bringing my parents as the excuse for going here again since they hadn’t yet had a chance to visit. We spent a whole day hiking and didn’t find the arch. We had a beautiful morning hike out to Delicate Arch though, and in general I love this park so it was still a great day, but I was going a bit crazy at this point trying to figure out where this arch was.

In 2018, I was sure that I figured out which arch it was that I was looking for (Partition Arch) based off of maps and pictures. I had been so close in 2016 when we hiked out to Landscape Arch. When you look at Landscape Arch, you can actually see Partition Arch in the hill to the right.

We live just outside the Twin Cities in Minnesota, so the logistical problem in searching for this arch was that Arches National Park is 1,290 miles away. But we were heading to the Grand Canyon for Spring Break, and I convinced my family to stop at Arches on our way home (my boys love this park too).

We had two choices, just hike past Landscape Arch to Partition Arch, which we’d all seen Landscape Arch before so this option didn’t seem worth it for stopping at the Park, or we could hike the whole Devil’s Garden trail (a 7.5 mile loop) and see it as we looped back to the parking lot. As our boys were 6 and 10 and finally old enough to hike this whole trail, that’s what we opted for. What an amazing hike! And I was able to find my arch (Partition Arch) as well.

Was it worth 3 trips to find this arch? Yes! Arches is my favorite of all of the National Parks I’ve been in. If you are interested in reading more about the best hikes of Arches National Park and nearby Canyonlands, see my blog post: Exploring Moab Utah

Escalante National Monument

There are so many amazing pictures of Escalante National Monument that this park had caught my attention for several years. Escalante requires a 4x4 vehicle however because it is pretty remote. As we don’t have a 4x4 vehicle, to get to this park we were going to need to rent one. My husband and son’s Spring Breaks didn’t line up last year, and I had the boys to myself for the week. I wasn’t signing up to drive across the country by myself, so I booked plane tickets for us, and since I needed to rent a vehicle anyway, I rented a truck - why not?. As I drive an electric car, driving a truck for the first time was an adventure by itself.

Toadstool is easy to get to - just make sure you bring enough water. We were there in March and it was pretty hot already.

We then went to Peekaboo and Spooky Gulch. The best part of this hike, though, was not the view (which was phenomenal), it was the adventure through the slot canyons. It took some thinking as we navigated through each section. Some spots required you to turn your feet one way and hold your bag in front of you and you squeeze through step by step. Other spots required climbing up or jumping down. This is one of my favorite hikes that I’ve ever been on and my boys loved it too.

For more information on Escalante, see my blog post: Grand Staircase Escalante

Moqui Caverns

The Moqui Caverns are between Zion National Park and Page, Arizona. If you are driving between these places, this is a really short stop that’s best in the evening when the sun is lower in the sky. There are no signs here. The adventure is finding where to pull off the road based on directions of other hikers. If you’d like to see how we found these caverns, check out my blog post: https://www.natureimpactsus.com/new-blog/2019/4/14/zion-national-park-a-3-day-itinerary

Horseshoe Bend

If you are visiting the Grand Canyon or Antelope Canyon, consider also stopping to see Horseshoe Bend. The hike to see this iconic view is underwhelming, but it’s quite short. The picture doesn’t do the view justice. This one is worth a bit of extra driving to get to.

If you are wondering what else you can do that is nearby Horseshoe Bend, see my blog post: How to Spend an Adventure-Filled Day in Page, AZ

Banff and Jasper National Parks (Canada)

My grandma had a painting of Lake Louise in the bedroom that I slept in. Because it was a painting, this was one of those places I didn’t think was actually real. This image has been filed away in my memory for years, and when planning a trip out to Glacier National Park we decided to head up to Banff and Jasper National Parks in Canada to see it in person. Hiking near this lake was like walking into that painting, but the real thing is so much better than any picture could show.

While planning our trip to Banff, I saw a picture of Petyo Lake, and couldn’t believe water could be so blue. Since we were heading up to Lake Louise, why not go just a bit further and add in Petyo Lake? It is this blue. There is no filter on the camera.

Since we were on our way to Petyo Lake, then why not go all the way to Jasper? You can see how I think by now… This was our favorite hike in Banff / Jasper. We used the Jasper SkyTram to get most of the way up the mountain and then hiked the last mile.

If you are interested in more information about Banff and Jasper, see my blog posts: Planning Guide to Banff and Hiking the Ice Fields in Banff and Jasper

Yosemite - Cloud’s Rest

I was looking for another hike that we could compare with our Grand Canyon Rim to Rim to Rim hike in terms of difficulty and beauty when I stumbled across Cloud’s Rest in Yosemite National Park. This is not a peak that you can get to in a day though. In order to get here, we needed to figure out how to backpack, determine and then purchase the gear we would need, and train to get ourselves up to this peak. The easier option would have been to enjoy just the picture, but in the journey to see this view we learned that backpacking was entirely within our ability and that it was fun. Now that we have our gear, we are looking at next summer options. This image started a new way for my family to take vacations.

Cloud’s Rest - Half Dome is in the background

Glacier Point - This is a view of the valley we backpacked through to get to Cloud’s Rest (peak just to the left of Half Dome)

If you are interested in learning more about Yosemite, visit my blog post: Best Hike in Yosemite

If you are curious about backpacking for the first time, check out this blog post: Begineers Guide to Backpacking

Frozen Waterfalls

Devil’s Kettle - Judge Magney State Park - Minnesota

Not every picture calls me to a trip that’s more than a 1000 miles away. I’d never thought that hiking in the winter was an option or would be worth the effort until looking at postcards in one of the State Parks in Minnesota when I saw a picture of a frozen waterfall. We already had snowshoes since we use them out on the lake in our backyard, so we took them with us on a tip up north along the shore of Lake Superior. Our first frozen waterfall hike was to Tetteguche State Park High Falls. Frozen waterfalls are wicked awesome as the water is somehow stopped on its way over the edge. We enjoy these hikes so much that this has become a yearly tradition for our family.

For more information on hikes along Lake Superior, see my blog: Planning A Trip to the North Shore

Spring Break 2020?

So what is inspiring our next trip? I stumbled across Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada while planning for our trip in 2019, but we weren’t close enough to include it in our itinerary. This year we are starting our Spring Break in Las Vegas to get to spend some time inside these pictures.