While Southern Utah's five national parks are complemented by countless lesser-known but equally dramatic wildernesses, they make the most obvious targets for travelers. In the southwest, Zion National Park centers on an awe-inspiring canyon, backed by barren highlands of white sandstone, while Bryce Canyon is a roaring inferno of orange pinnacles. Over to the east, Arches holds an eroded desertscape of graceful red-rock fins and spurs, all on a more manageable scale than the astonishing hundred-mile vistas of neighboring Canyonlands . Both lie within easy reach of Moab , a disheveled former mining town turned Utah's hippest destination. The fifth park, Capitol Reef , stretches through the middle of the state, pierced by slender, ravishing canyons.
The defining topographical feature of southwest Utah is the Grand Staircase . Named by pioneer river-runner John Wesley Powell, it consists of a series of plateaus, stacked tier upon tier, that climb from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. The Chocolate Cliffs , near the border with Arizona, are followed by the dazzling Vermillion Cliffs , then the White Cliffs - a 2000ft wall of Navajo sandstone, best seen at Zion - the Grey Cliffs , and finally the Pink Cliffs of Bryce. Although it took a billion years of sedimentation for these rocks to form, the staircase itself has only been created in the last dozen million years, by the general upthrust of the Colorado Plateau , which stretches away to the east.
This is a tough land, and a rough one for travelers: with fewer roads than anywhere else in the US, almost nobody gets far into the deep backcountry. Even within the national parklands, overground access is more often than not limited to heavy-duty, high-clearance four-wheel-drive vehicles, hikers and, increasingly, to mountain bikes . The best way of all to experience the region is as the first explorers did: by water , along such rivers as the Colorado and the Green. Dozens of companies offer river-rafting trips, floating downstream and camping out under the clear night sky to experience the sights, sounds and smells of the desert.
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