A fantastic two weeks in AZ and UT!
My husband did a great job planning our vacation in March and Bogley was useful in his research (thanks!), so thought I'd post a trip report. We packed a lot in on our trip and saw such a variety of things - it's kind of hard to summarize everything we did succinctly. So I'm just going to include the info from our webpage where all our pictures are posted ( AZ/UT 2012) and add a few of my favorite pictures (so difficult to choose!). Thanks for looking!
In March 2012, Steve, Norah, and I returned to the southwest for another fantastic trip through the canyons and rocks of northern Arizona and southern Utah. Our first major stop was a backpacking trip in the Grand Canyon - a repeat of the trip Steve and I first hiked about ten years ago. It was just as beautiful the second time around and a lot of fun to hike with Norah. From there we moved on to Page, AZ; located near the AZ/UT border by the scenic Lake Powell. We had visited this area six years ago and while we returned to Buckskin Gulch, everything else we did was a new experience for all of us. We particularly loved Coyote Buttes South and Yellow Rock. Such a dazzling array of colors and rock formations! To round out our vacation we made a short side trip to Bryce Canyon, where the star gazing was just as amazing as the orange hoodoos.
Some logistics: For planning and information we relied heavily upon the Michael Kelsey guidebooks and Laurent Marteres photography books, as well as research on the internet (trip reports and forums, including the useful http://www.bogley.com/ and http://www.tripadvisor.com/ ). For our back road adventures around Page we rented a 4WD Jeep from Rick at Canyon Country Adventures). He was great to work with and we continued his streak of never having a jeep get stuck (yay for us!). We were a little like gypsies on this trip and were on the move most of the time. We used a mix of backpacking, car camping, and motels. We especially loved camping at Alstrom Point (thanks to Rick