5-Day Utah Desert Road Trip with Moonscapes and Delicate Arch

We collect you in Salt Lake City in the morning and drive south past the San Rafael Swell, where the interstate cuts through a fin of uplifted rock the pioneers called impassable. By early afternoon, you are wandering the hoodoo army of Goblin Valley, thousands of squat, wind-carved goblins in a natural amphitheatre that you explore freely.

Those with the appetite can add the Little Wild Horse slot canyon, shoulder-width and sculpted like poured caramel. Evening brings us to Hanksville, the last town before the badlands, for the first desert sunset and a proper steak. Night at a design-led desert hotel.

This is the day the expedition is named for, run entirely on backcountry clay. Before first light, we stand on the rim at Moonscape Overlook as the sun rakes across a grey lunar sea; breakfast is coffee and a camp table on the edge of the void.

The morning explores Factory Butte's moon-plain and the washes of the Blue Valley, where the silver spire the photographers named Long Dong Silver rises from its striped amphitheatre. After a siesta through the harsh light, the golden hour belongs to the Bentonite Hills, violet, rust, and bone bands glowing under the low sun, with NASA's Mars research station over the ridge. Dark skies and the Milky Way close the night.

We head west into Capitol Reef, the least-visited of Utah's great parks, for its wildest corner: the Cathedral Valley loop, a 4x4 circuit that fords the Fremont River and runs beneath freestanding monoliths. The Temple of the Sun and Temple of the Moon stand sheer-walled and alone on the desert floor, with the glittering black dome of Glass Mountain at their feet.

The afternoon drops into Fruita, the Mormon oasis inside the park, for pie from the historic orchards, thousand-year-old Fremont petroglyphs, and the great white domes of the Waterpocket Fold in evening light. Night in Torrey, at the reef's doorstep.

A scenic morning run east takes us back past the badlands for any shot the light denied us, then along the Colorado River gorge into Moab, the red-rock capital of the West. The afternoon enters Arches National Park with timed entry already handled: the sandstone fins of Park Avenue, the improbable poise of Balanced Rock, and the Windows.

Then comes the walk the whole day is built around: three miles up the slickrock as the heat breaks, arriving at Delicate Arch for the final hour, when the arch burns orange above its stone bowl and the La Sal Mountains go blue behind it. Dinner in Moab; night at a boutique hotel.

One last alarm worth setting. At Mesa Arch, on the rim of Canyonlands' Island in the Sky, the rising sun ignites the underside of the arch while two thousand feet of canyon country glows through the opening; the most famous dawn in the Southwest, and we are there before the light.

Grand View Point and the White Rim follow, then the Colorado's giant gooseneck from Dead Horse Point. By early afternoon, the expedition turns for Salt Lake City, dropping you at the airport or your hotel by evening, or, if you prefer, at Moab's Canyonlands Field for the short hop to Denver or Salt Lake.