Like most of our Dave Trippin’ Spring Break excursions, this trip west to visit some of our country’s best national parks started on the couch.

It was late last fall. We’d just lost one of our dear friends, Jeff Kovatch, and ready or not, Christmas was barreling down on us with mission impossible – trying to buy for two teenage boys whose parental communication had dwindled to a series of yet-to-be interpreted short grunts and nods between shoveling a Kroger’s worth of food in their mouths at one sitting.

Feeling eight shades of blue about it all, my wife Toril and I talked about just hunkering down, saving what money we have and going light through the Candlenights, but W.W.J.D.?

Well, Jeff would plan a Spring Break to end all Spring Breaks, give it to his kids for Christmas, then load up the fam Chevy Chase style, and drive windows down into the western wind – and so we did.

With only a week for Spring Break, we could not actually station wagon our way west. We had to investigate the best passage to some of the best National Parks, and preferably one that didn’t go through Donner Pass since the late writer Allan Eckert warned me about that place.

Although my Baptist upbringing made it nearly a sin even to say the name Las Vegas, we went to the devil’s neon desert playground anyway, as our eight-day Grand Circle trip was possible by flying Frontier (flyfrontier.com) pretty dirt cheap and direct from Cincinnati to Vegas, from which you can access the Grand Canyon (and the famous Native American Skywalk) in two hours.

Note that while we were able to snag four round-trip airfares including all fees for less than $500, the Frontier flights are not without hassle. Our flight back was mid-week, leaving Vegas at 10 p.m. and arriving in Cincinnati at 4 a.m. on a Wednesday morning, which meant the kids had to miss a couple extra days of school. We also took kids’ backpacks because anything bigger required a $25 carry-on fee.

Vegas, which actually has tons of family friendly entertainment options, was also great to fly into since it is littered with relatively inexpensive hotels and affordable rental cars.

While we actually spent three days in Vegas (more on that in a later column), where we cherry-picked some amazing day trips, our main impetus for being out west was to see a few of the glut of national parks along what is called The Grand Circle (utah.com/itinerary/grand-circle-tour) which can be accessed most easily by air out of Salt Lake City, Las Vegas or Flagstaff/Phoenix.

While from Vegas you can easily day trip to National Park sites such as Death Valley and Joshua Tree (both to the west), we rolled north to Zion National Park, which is 168 miles from Las Vegas, to begin our own Circle that included rolling east to Bryce Canyon, before turning south to check out The Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, Glen Canyon and Lake Powell, and Grand Canyon (the main village at South Rim) before heading back to Las Vegas from the southern side along old Route 66 and then the Hoover Dam.

We used the Roadtrippers app (roadtrippers.com) which points out interesting attractions and oddities, and we have to give our local AAA a shout-out since the hard-copy tour books came in ace both in Vegas and the remote national parks where cell service is sketchy at best.

On the way to Zion, we hit up St. George, Utah, where we stopped for groceries and local Utah brews, as well as lunch, and found a funky little, inexpensive stop at St. George Dinosaur Discovery at Site at Johnson Farm (utah.com/dinosaur) one of the world’s best collections of dinosaur tracks.

While it may seem odd to stop for groceries, one thing we made sure at every hotel we stayed at is that the places had refrigerators, so we were able to load up at Trader Joe’s for breakfast and lunches, and then only ate out one meal a day at local diners and dives – save for the Bryce Canyon Lodge.

When we got into more remote places like Bryce Canyon, a ski resort was closer than a grocery store, so it was good to plan ahead, have some basics, and carry – like we do daily – cost-savers like refillable water bottles.

On the hotel front, Toril did a lot of research online, and it really paid off right off the bat in Springdale, Utah, which is the gateway to Zion National Park, (nps.gov/zion/). Zion, the fifth most visited National Park, drew more than 4.2 million visitors in 2016 to its spectacular canyons and waterfalls.

While you could stay at the Zion Lodge inside the park, the town of Springdale, which sits at 3,910 feet in elevation, has about two dozen shops, restaurants and less expensive motels, including The Pioneer Lodge (zionpioneerlodge.com). Like the rest of the town, it has panoramic views of Zion Canyon’s mountain even from its out-back hot tub, where we got a wonderful personal testimony of the beauty of the U.S. National Parks from an Israeli tourist who has been coming to the States for 15 years to hike.

Like the old Lay’s chip commercial that says you can’t just have one, that is definitely true of a National Park visit. Especially for trips out west where you will hit multiples, you can save money by buying the $80 annual NPS pass that allows entrance to all National Parks and Monuments rather than pay the $30 per car fee at each place.

Why folks come that far to see our national treasures was soon self evident, Zion, which the nearby Southern Paiutes called the land of straight-up mountains, turned young and old, Japanese, German and American alike into jaw-dropping worshippers at its golden-sun lit mountains and the Virgin River that carved its canyon.

Not unlike skiing, when exploring the rugged national parks it is OK to split up some and let everybody (of proper age) hike to their own ability, so while we hit easy and awesome trails such as Weeping Rock and Riverside Walk together, we split up with Toril taking the Kayenta and Upper Emerald Pool trails while myself and the boys trekked up on top of the park on the famous Angel’s Landing Trail, a 5.4-mile trail with a 1,489-foot climb.

It was that Angel’s Landing trek, where people were already in a packed line resembling the worst Disney line you’ve ever seen – and if you were holding onto a rusty chain between sheer drop-offs – that we were glad we had come early in the season in March before Zion really got crowded.

Leaving the bulk of tourists behind in Zion, we drove 5,000 feet higher, heading east to Bryce Canyon, out of Zion on what is recognized as one of the world’s most scenic drives – the Zion-Mount Carmel Highway (Highway 9) which features plenty of areas to hike, a famous 1.1-mile-long tunnel through the mountains and the Checkerboard Mesa. Check out the hikes at (zionnational-park.com/zgeology2.htm).

Located just 78 miles northeast of Zion, Bryce Canyon (nps.gov/brca/index.htm) was a refreshing change from Zion with more weird rocks, or Hoodoos, than people.

When we arrived in mid-March, the Lodge was only on its second night of serving dinner for the season, as Bryce’s Canyon’s elevation (more than 8,296 feet at Bryce Point) made for not only a gorgeous frosty icing like topping on rocks, but also an actual real blizzard for dessert the night we ate at the lodge.

Being the reading kind, we knew this and had packed hats and gloves and layers for 20-degree nights/40-degree days in Bryce even though temps during our Vegas days were nearly 90.

While we got a full day of hiking at Bryce, the 55-square-mile park known for its hoodoos – pinnacle and odd-shaped rocks left standing by the forces of erosion – I jonesed for more and felt it hard to leave the magical area. Early pioneers called the rock formations “Fairyland Castles,” thus the names of the Fairyland Loop Trail and Fairyland Canyon.

If you’re in the area and want to see some hoodoos and lose even more crowds, south of Bryce Canyon is Red Canyon. located along Byway 12, a 121-mile route between U.S. 89 and Utah 24. We popped in there for a Sunday morning walkabout on our way south to the Grand Canyon.

As has been the case on most of our trips, I am, like my late Pappaw Creed Reedy, a roadside gawker prone to stop anywhere along the way.

Since Bryce Canyon to Grand Canyon is a five-and-a-half hour drive (mostly all along the scenic U.S. 89), we planned a few stops that were a lot of fun.

Located along U.S. 89 in Orderville, Utah, (between Bryce Canyon and the Grand Canyon) is The Rock Stop, a known rock hound stop since the 1950s and a Roadtrippers suggestion.

While the famous dinosaur sculptures of original owner Elbert Porter are now on display near Dinosaur National Monument, current owners Don and Mickey Davis keep up the shop’s tourist friendly reputation, serving up a mean cup of joe and more than a little bit of love for the area, of which Mickey is a native and to which they moved a dozen years ago from Vegas. Don, whose shop has a map for tourists to pin, said Europeans account for 40 percent of his business, and that we were the first folks to visit his shop from West Virginia.

As a photographer, Toril really wanted to explore slot canyons. On the way to Grand Canyon are some of the world’s most famous, like Antelope Canyon and the lesser known X Canyon, both of which are amazing but will set a family of four back $200 or so.

A Dave Cheapin’ alternative – we paid $20 for all four of us – was found through a bit of detective work that steered us about nine miles down a red dirt canyon road to a beautiful slot canyon in Wire Pass in the Paria Canyon-Vermillion Cliffs Wilderness, located just off of U.S. 89 near Kanab, Utah. The Wilderness Area is part of The Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, (https://utah.com/grand-staircase-escalante) 1.9 million acres of public lands established in 1996. It is a good stop that is just west of Glen Canyon and Lake Powell at part of this National Monument, which is the size of the state of Delaware.

Although it was a 6.6-mile roundtrip mid-morning hike that took a few hours, we found ourselves refreshed for the road. We made the obligatory – and worth it – stop at Horseshoe Bend, the horseshoe-shaped meander of the Colorado River through Glen Canyon near the town of Page, Arizona. You can do a 1.5-mile roundtrip hike to the overlook from U.S. 89, where you can take in a 1,000-foot vista down to the river below where you could make out the blue boats of the River outfitters out of Page.

While this river rat pined for another day to run the Colorado, we drove our way to the Grand Canyon’s South Rim through the heart of the Navajo Reservation.

We stopped for a wonderful dinner at the historic Navajo-run Cameron Trading Post and Lodge (camerontradingpost.com) before heading west through the Little Colorado River Gorge to the South Rim Grand Canyon Village. The lodge is still a center of local trade with Native American art, a lodge, gallery, RV park and Navajo restaurant that featured some authentic dishes such as the Navajo taco – a bigger-than-a-plate sized fry-bread-based taco – while seated in the dining room with a panoramic view of the Little Colorado Gorge right out the giant windows as the sun began to fall.

While we stayed just outside the park in Zion and in Bryce, we stayed inside the park in the Market Plaza at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon National Park (nps.gov/grca/index.htm).

That’s not an easy feat as there are only seven lodges and a campground, all of which can book up a year in advance. And Toril had to keep checking daily online to finally be able to slip in (thanks to a cancellation) for a second night. While we stayed at Yavapai Lodge, those wanting more modern-day amenities (Wi-Fi, swimming pool, etc,) are best to go to Tusayan, Arizona, which is located 11 miles south of The South Rim Village, full of dozens of lodging and dining choices and on the Grand Canyon bus line.

With only one true day in the Canyon, we got up early and stayed up late.

Since we had arrived in the dark, we truly were blown away at first light at the Grand Canyon, which probably is the only thing in America that should be referred to as “huuuge,” being a mile deep, more than 18 miles wide at spots and 277 miles long.

In the lingering winter frost, we watched the sunrise come creeping over the Grand Canyon from the vantage of Yavapai Point on the South Rim, while a handful of the 5.9 million folks who visit the canyon annually huddled under blankets with smiles of awe and wonder.

With no day like today, our only day, Toril and I went back and rousted the sleeping teenagers and headed out with purpose to walk to the South Rim, where the 12.8-mile long Rim Trail from Hermit’s Rest to South Kaibab Trailhead offers great vantage points.

We chalked up nearly nine miles of it, and folks can, on most of it, walk, bicycle or take the shuttle buses to 14

different overlooks.

One of our favorite parts, on a local note, was visiting Kolb Studios where the Kolb brothers, pioneering Grand Canyon adventurers, photographers and videographers, took a now famous photo of Marshall College graduate and Parkersburg, West Virginia, native Bessie Hyde and her husband Glen, who disappeared on their honeymoon, a boat trip through the Colorado River’s wild rapids, in 1928. You can read more in Brad Dimock’s book, “Sunk Without A Sound.”

Off the rim, one of our favorite stops was an afternoon rush in the car out to the Tusayan Ruin, a Pueblo ruin, for an NPS ranger program that told the story of how the Tusayan people survived and thrived for years in the arid canyon ridges that only receive about a dozen inches of rain annually, growing gardens in small plots and surviving on nutrient rich pinon nuts and Utah juniper.

After a full day of hiking and nearly getting blown off the trails at Hermit’s Rest by 40- and 50-mile-an-hour winds, we took the bus back to the Village to Maswik Lodge to dine at its reasonably priced pizza pub.

A couple notes on visiting the Canyon – it’s really not a great place for little kids. There are about 12 deaths each year at the Grand Canyon, including from natural causes, medical problems, suicide, heat, drowning and traffic crashes. Last year, there were 17. On average, two to three deaths per year are from falls over the rim, which in many places is not fenced off in any way.

Also – and thank you Sam St. Clair for the tip – but if you don’t have much time beware of the lure of hiking “down” into the Grand Canyon. Easily accessible off the Rim Trail is Bright Angel Trail’s longest trip from the rim to the Bright Angel Campground. The deceptive 9.5 mile trek takes two days due to its 4,340-foot drop in elevation, for what goes down must come up.

With our Grand Circle Tour grand stamped by a bucket-list trip to the canyon, we rolled the Arizona desert highways southwest back to Vegas.

We didn’t get to stand on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, but on the way back did get to stand on a corner in Seligman, Arizona, a must-stop and the birthplace of Route 66 (route66seligmanarizona.com).

After an awesome lunch stop at Angel & Vilma Delgadillo’s Route 66 Gift Shop & Visitor’s Center (a Hillbilly Hotdogs’ level quirky roadside food attraction), we literally dodged the tumbleweeds back to Vegas, notching up a ghost town visit (a Southwest must-do), a Hoover Dam stop and some full-on quirky southside Vegas coolness at the Ethel M Chocolates’ breathtaking Botanical Cactus Garden (www.ethelm.com) and banging the machines at the National Pinball Hall of Fame with its 10,000 square feet of vintage and new pinball machines (pinballmuseum.org).

Out of time days ago, and out of money before we started, the Dave Trippin’ crew figured we better take our kid backpacks, sunburns, blown minds, National Park patches and dirty clothes back to Huntington.

Next time, we will come back and see more of those wild west National Parks.

Or if that Gremlins slot machine really goes wild in Las Vegas, we will see it all. We will see it all.

Learn More:

Go check out the closest NPS sites by going online at https://www.nps.gov/findapark/national-park-week.htm.