Two and a Half Week Four Corners Road Trip
Planning a multi-state road trip sounds exciting… until you actually sit down to figure out the route. That’s usually when the tabs multiply, the options explode, and everything starts to feel a little overwhelming.
For me? That’s the fun part.
This trip started when my mom booked a week at her Worldmark timeshare resort in Moab and invited us to join her. The research started immediately.
We had already passed through Moab in 2022 during our nine-week Southwest national parks road trip, but we hadn’t made it down into the Four Corners region. This felt like the perfect opportunity.
I started my planning by pulling up my old spreadsheet to see if there were things we had missed on our last trip. Then, I opened Google Maps and started my search dropping pins adding anything interesting to a growing list. Then over to the National Park Service map. More pins. Back to Google maps. Zooming in and out, “search this area”, gliding along the route, dropping pins, and adding things to the spreadsheet like a madwoman.
Find a trail head, down the rabbit hole I go. Is it doable for our family? Is it 2 miles… or 12?
This is so much fun!
After days of this dance between me, Google Maps, my spreadsheet, and endless websites an itinerary is born. The route is determined, the stops decided. Now, the dance begins again as I go down the rabbit hole of accommodations.
We’re not terribly picky, especially if we’re only staying one night. But, we do have some minimum requirements. We need at minimum two beds, preferably three. I will always favor a place with free breakfast over one without. A few extra dollars a night is worth not having to eat out or pack and plan for breakfasts. Pools for the kids to play in after a long day always buy us some goodwill. Hot tubs are nice for the adults too.
After all this is done and the rooms booked, we… wait. It’s the hardest part. While I wait I watch the weather and think about packing. I am not a last minute packer, and I have a spreadsheet so I don’t forget things, go figure. I am packing for at least 3, sometimes I have to help the 4th out with suggestions, and I fold way better than him.
This trip we wanted to revisit the natural history museum in Salt Lake and visit This is the Place that we had missed on previous trips. We made it to the museum, but This is the Place remains on the list because it was closed. I still don’t know why. It’s supposed to be open on Saturdays. Sometimes despite the best planning things don’t work out. We visited the gift shop and wandered around. We also visited the Pony Express Trail monument at the base of the hill that I hadn’t found out about in my research.
Our next stop was Thanksgiving Point in Lehi. This group of museums had been on our list for years. The kids loved the Museum of Natural Curiosity. I loved Ashton Gardens, and all of us enjoyed the Butterfly Biosphere and the Museum of Ancient Life. We easily visited all the museums in one day, so it’s definitely worth it to buy the day pass to save significantly.
Now that we had ticked off the museums, we headed to Moab. I had wanted to stop at Timpanogos Cave on our way, but it’s not open in April. It remains on the someday list. To break up the drive we stopped at the natural history museum in Price. We had been to this museum before as well, but it’s a great little museum and the perfect size for a stop. I also figured it would be better received than the regular history museum in town. Fossils are usually a hit with kids.
On the one hand I was super stoked about six days of free lodging in a higher price point place like Moab. On the other hand, it made for a less than clean itinerary. There was a lot of back and forth driving, making for some long days.
The main goals on this trip were to add six more park stamps to our book and collect the junior ranger badges to match. The itinerary included:
Colorado National Monument
Needles district of Canyonlands
Mesa Verde
Natural Bridges
Hovenweep
Yucca House.
Plus, many other historical sites and state parks.
Needles Unit- Canyonlands
Over the next 13 days we covered about 1,500 miles of amazing, and sometimes boring, landscapes. We hiked to cliff dwellings and natural bridges. Traversed down canyons and up cliffs. We explored museums full of history lessons and ruins full of ancient wonders.
We found ourselves in places that truly take your breath away and make you appreciate everything this world has to offer. There is no better classroom. Travel pushes you. It challenges you. It makes you grow.
After 15 days of weaving around the southern corners of Utah and Colorado, near the end of our trip we crossed into Arizona to visit Monument Valley. From there, we wound our way back up over the Moki Dugway and through the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Capitol Reef, and all the way back to our starting point in Boise.
Seventeen days.
Over 2,500 miles.
Six park stamps.
Over 1,100 pictures.
And memories to last a lifetime.
Want to take this trip?
If you would like to take this trip, but you don’t want to go through the entire research process yourself, I’ve put everything from this trip into a structured research pack, including the full itinerary, spreadsheets, route map, and detailed planning guide. You can read more about it here.
Sipapu natural bridge
