Utah Diaries: "Utah, get me two (weeks off)!"

From Vegas to Zion to Bryce Canyon

Back in 2014 when Kurt and I chose our wedding date, I didn’t really think about the fact that it fell so close to my birthday—at the time, we were working with the availability of our venue, a camping/canoeing outfitter. But as our first milestone anniversary approached, I realized the power of this compact block of time. What manager can say no to two weeks off so I could celebrate two occasions in one? Two weeks away is amazing. It’s restorative. It’s long enough to actually forget all of your login passwords. It’s an amazing gift (but also, everyone deserves paid time off and should be able to take it.)

For our tenth anniversary (and my forty-fifth birthday), I wanted to plan our favorite kind of trip, a camping/hiking road trip. Whenever Kurt and I chat with other travelers in national parks, Utah always come up amongst people’s favorite destination. “You have to see Utah, it’s the best,” we’d been told by multiple retirees in enormous RVs in various trailhead parking lots, and I …