My dad is a Yorkshireman, born in the 1950s, so not one to overstate things. He spent the first two days of our US road trip preoccupied more with the lack of baked beans than the views. I knew Utah had impressed, then, when he uttered one of the most flowery declarations I’d ever heard from him about a place, ‘This is quite good, isn’t it?’ Not even a Yorkshireman, it seemed, could fail to be moved by Utah’s Highway 12.
In a bid to achieve the impossible – namely, tell my dad something he didn’t know – I had plotted a nine-day, 1,120-mile circular route around Utah’s lesser-known state parks system, which celebrate their 60th anniversary this year. (My parents and I live in different countries these days, so we added a dash of nostalgia to this reunion holiday by renting an RV, recalling our tradition of family camping trips.)
Utah has 43 state parks, many said to be just as mind-blowing as its famous Mighty Five national parks: Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon and Zion. The nationals, however, are now extremely clogged with visitors (some have seen attendance almost double in the past five years). Zion recently announced that it is considering what may be a first for a US national park: reserved entry only. Already some trails can only be hiked after entering a lottery for permits. As an antidote, I picked out an alternative mighty five, just as varied and spectacular as the big boys, but with elbow room to spare.
Utah is largely thought of as red-rock country, but I’d struggle to name a colour I didn’t see in the 120 miles we drove along Highway 12, a designated scenic byway. The landscape shifted constantly and abruptly. Hulking pink rock fortresses disappeared suddenly, replaced by incongruous clusters of green trees. These also soon vanished, revealing white mountains striped rust-red. Then the colours drained entirely as a gritty-grey, hulking flat-topped butte surrounded by ashy gravel pyramids appeared, like a premonition of a planet gone to seed.
Whereas to me these colours illustrated nature’s artistry, a more practical person might say they implied precious minerals. Utah is mined for copper, gold, silver, zinc and lead, as well as oil and gas. At one point, we crossed into Carbon County, so named for rich deposits of anthracite. In February this year, Utah’s own congressional delegation introduced a bill to sell off 3.3 million acres of public land to the fossil-fuel industry. However, they unwittingly found a rare patch of common ground for the US’s warring ideologies: love for the great American outdoors. A public outcry from conservatives and liberals alike saw the bill hastily withdrawn.
But industry and protected lands have a long history of uneasy coexistence in Utah. There have been years of controversy about the proximity of an exposed gas pipeline to our first stop, Dead Horse Point, a state park known for its 100-mile gaze over a national park, Canyonlands. (The name comes from a legend about callous cowboys leaving surplus horses here to die of thirst.) The park was a welcome contrast to nearby Arches, which we briefly visited to wait out an obstinate patch of grim drizzle (you can take the man out of Yorkshire, but the stubborn chuff brought the weather).
Looking for parking at Arches proved futile. The lots were filled with licence plates from almost every state, as though all of America had come to while away a rainy afternoon. It felt like a sign when Dead Horse greeted us with a clear blue sky above its 50 shades of red. Looking over its epic, endless vantage of flat-topped mesas and canyons, I could count our fellow visitors on one hand. This was a clear case of state parks 1, and national parks nil.
Though you could gawp at it all day, visiting Utah’s vast and varied terrain isn’t just a spectator sport. Around 65% of state land is publicly accessible. And with two-thirds of Utah’s three million-strong population concentrated along the 120-mile Wasatch Front (the conurbation in northern Utah that includes Salt Lake City), much of it is an empty outdoor playground. And people had brought their toys along: everywhere we looked, bus-like RVs were towing boats, motorcycles, jeeps and more.
We spent an idyllic afternoon at a beachside campsite, where nothing seemed to move or make a noise save for the grasshoppers. Though the island was far from empty, the vastness of the place left us feeling blessedly isolated. Sauntering to the water’s edge, we noted how the greyish-white sand crunched underfoot like snow: the oolitic (egg-like) sand here is coated with calcium carbonate, producing round, pearl-like grains. Next day, we chose an easy hiking trail tracing the lake’s edge, where dad seemed to have some sort of emotional breakthrough. ‘I love it here,’ he said.
Though the future of Utah’s wildernesses feels uncertain, I take heart that it can turn even my dad to gushy adoration. Tourism can bring its own problems but a sense of wonder and protectiveness over our natural heritage is what could keep it safe. For SUWA’s Gross, falling visitor numbers would be worse than overcrowding. In his opinion, ‘As long as the state parks are making money, Utah politicians will support them.’