America's Greatest National Parks

Marooned in Utah’s ochre vastness, Moab is the state’s adventure capital. Local museums chart the area’s ancient origins, with exhibits exploring paleontology and the rich indigenous culture, but the outdoors soon beckons: a land of hiking trails snaking to secluded waterfalls and canyons, of weathered sandstone pillars soaring like the spires of a cathedral, and of sunsets that plunge the desert into a blazing bath of pink, red and gold. 

Horned, humped mesas, spindly buttes and open highways swallowed by a landscape bigger than any imagination can muster: Monument Valley is like nowhere else. Instantly familiar, it is one great, unending red wilderness seared into the memory, its dry air shivering with the sound of rattlesnakes and tribal tales. Further south gapes the Grand Canyon, America’s natural showpiece, where millions of years of geological history are etched on its russet walls, looming over the silver bends of the Colorado River. 

Blushing beneath red sandstone cliffs and ponderosa pine forests, Sedona seduces with its beautiful desert landscapes, thermal springs and flawless night skies. Beyond the off-roading tracks and lush gorge hikes, history runs through this region’s russet bones: petroglyphs, carved as long ago as AD 600, have been discovered deep in the canyon walls, while the labyrinthine dwellings and burial grounds of the Sinagua tribe were hewn from the rocks over seven centuries ago.