Utah packs five national parks and a dozen state parks into one state. Here are 17 spots that earn the trip.
1. Delicate Arch
Utah's most photographed landmark. The 3-mile round-trip hike gains 480 feet, and the payoff is a 46-foot freestanding arch with the La Sal Mountains behind it. Go for sunset.
2. Dead Horse Point State Park
A mesa overlook 2,000 feet above a horseshoe bend in the Colorado River. It's the shot from Thelma & Louise, and it costs $20 per vehicle to see it.
3. Bryce Canyon Amphitheater
Thousands of hoodoos packed into one horseshoe-shaped basin. Sunrise Point and Sunset Point both deliver, and the colors shift fast in early morning light.
4. Zion Narrows
You wade the Virgin River between 1,000-foot sandstone walls. No permit needed for the bottom-up route from the Temple of Sinawava.
5. Angels Landing
A 5.4-mile round trip with chains bolted into the rock for the last half mile. Permits are required now, but the view down Zion Canyon from the top is the payoff.
6. Goblin Valley State Park
Thousands of mushroom-shaped sandstone formations you're allowed to walk right up to and climb on. Best light comes an hour before sunset.
7. Monument Valley
Sandstone buttes rising straight out of the desert floor on the Utah-Arizona border. The visitor center overlook alone is worth the stop, or drive the 17-mile loop road.
8. Bonneville Salt Flats
12 miles of dead-flat white salt near Wendover. Go at sunset for reflection shots if there's a thin layer of water on the surface.
9. Capitol Reef National Park
A 100-mile rock wrinkle called the Waterpocket Fold, with red cliffs and working pioneer orchards you can walk into during harvest season (June through October).
10. Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park
Pink and red sand dunes formed from eroded Navajo sandstone. Quiet, uncrowded, and a strong contrast against blue sky.
11. Kodachrome Basin State Park
Sixty-seven sandstone chimneys, called sedimentary pipes, scattered across a basin near Bryce. Named by a 1948 National Geographic expedition for how well the colors photographed.
12. Lake Powell
A 186-mile-long reservoir on the Colorado River with red canyon walls dropping straight into blue water. Access from Bullfrog or Wahweap marinas.
13. Kanarraville Falls
A slot canyon hike near Cedar City that ends at a 15-foot waterfall, with a ladder built into the rock to climb past it. You'll hike in ankle-to-knee-deep water most of the way, and permits ($15 a person, capped at 150 hikers a day) are required through kanarrafalls.com.
14. Little Wild Horse Canyon
A slot canyon loop near Goblin Valley, narrow enough in spots to touch both walls at once. The full loop runs about 8 miles.
15. Cedar Breaks National Monument
A 2,000-foot-deep amphitheater of red rock at 10,000 feet elevation, so it stays 20 to 30 degrees cooler than the desert floor below.
16. Antelope Island State Park
A causeway drive out onto the largest island in the Great Salt Lake, with free-roaming bison herds and salt flat views back toward the Wasatch.
17. Bear Lake
A 20-mile-long lake straddling the Utah-Idaho border, known for turquoise water from limestone deposits. Locals call it the Caribbean of the Rockies.