It’s here! 5 years of marriage for us! Every year, Tony and I forget about your typical anniversary gifts (and every holiday for that matter), and celebrate our marriage by traveling! We’re trying to hit as many National Parks as possible in our lifetime, so when we were deciding where to go this year- we knew Utah would be the perfect place because there are so many!
We love road trips. Something about the changing scenery, the podcasts, the conversations, and spontaneity of it makes me giddy. And we love that we get to bring our 10 year old English Setter along for the ride! So even though the drive from Minnesota to Utah is long, we decided to tackle this trip in our jeep, and stop in Colorado along the way!
THE ROUTE:
Tony is a mastermind when planning trips. When we narrowed it down to Southern Utah, we listed all of the national parks we wanted to visit and what specifically we wanted to see at each one. We had a timeline of 7 days that we had blocked off for the trip, so we prioritized the parks that we wanted to spend the most time at and built our timeline around that.
Day 1 Full travel day from Minnesota to Colorado
* Camping location TBD depending on how far we get
Day 2 Great Sand Dunes NP and Mesa Verde NP
* Camping at the Morefield Campground
Day 3 Arches NP + Canyonlands NP
* Camping at KOA in Green River Utah
Day 4 Capitol Reef NP + Bryce Canyon NP
* Camping at Dispersed camping (exact location TBD)
Day 5 Zion NP
* Camping location TBD
Day 6 & 7 Travel days back home to MN
Here is a map of our route from Great Sand Dunes NP to Zion! (We had originally planned to hit The Wave Trail as the last stop in our journey, but decided to take that off the list and head home after Zion.)
CAMPING:
Since we were driving, we wanted to figure out a camping system that would be easy and convenient because we knew we were never spending more than one night at the same camp site. Since we like to spend sunset out at the parks taking photos, we knew we would be setting up camp in the dark most nights. For these reasons, we decided to buy the Skycamp iKamper system that mounts on top of our Wrangler! To say we are obsessed is an understatement! It takes 1 minute to set up and we love that it is big enough to sleep us and our dog, Chevy, comfortably! (it’s a king sized bed on the inside!)
To mount the iKamper on our jeep, we purchased this roof rack for from Amazon. (And here is the matching rear bumper that hooks up to the vehicle’s frame to support the weight of the camper.)
PACKING:
Here are some of my favorite necessities to bring on a road trip!
My favorite travel sized camera:
Professional Camera Gear:
Updates and photos from the trip, coming soon!
Chevy is ready! LET’S GO!
lifewiththebeckers.com 
I love Mesa Verde and Arches! Haven’t been to the others yet but planning on it next year. Looking forward to reading about your trip!
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