Season

Fall

100 destinations along 70 roads

Fall is the West's quiet reward. The heat breaks, the crowds thin, and at elevation the aspens go gold in a rush that runs downhill from the high country through late September and October — whole mountainsides turning at once, then bare. The red rock reads warmer against a low sun, cottonwoods flare yellow in the canyon bottoms, and the hiking finally feels easy. It is the season locals wait for, and the one to plan a trip around.

NM-11

Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge

San Antonio

A Rio Grande refuge south of Socorro where cranes and geese winter by the tens of thousands on wetlands and fields kept by people, because the river no longer floods to make them.

NM-41

Valles Caldera National Preserve

Los Alamos

A crater thirteen miles across, floored with grass, left by an eruption 1.25 million years ago and owned privately for 140 years under a law that called it vacant land.

UT-91

Zion National Park

Springdale

Towering sandstone cliffs that glow like fire at sunset

UT-101

Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry

Cleveland

The densest concentration of Jurassic-era dinosaur bones ever found

Scenic Byway 1213

Boulder

One of the last places in America to receive paved road access

Boulder Mountain

Boulder

A 50-mile forested plateau at 11,000 feet with 80 alpine lakes

Cannonville

Gateway to Kodachrome Basin and the Grand Staircase

Escalante

The town that gave Grand Staircase-Escalante its name

Escalante Petrified Forest State Park

Escalante

Walk among 150-million-year-old stone trees

Hells Backbone Grill

Boulder

A farm-to-table pioneer in the middle of nowhere

Henrieville

A blink-and-you-will-miss-it ranching hamlet

Kiva Koffeehouse

Escalante

A hand-built cliffside coffee shop with canyon views

Lower Calf Creek Falls

Escalante

A 126-foot waterfall hidden in a desert canyon

Mossy Cave Trail

Tropic

A hidden waterfall and ice cave just off the highway

Red Canyon

Panguitch

A blazing red gateway carved by water and wind

The Hogback

Boulder

A knife-edge ridge with 1000-foot drops on both sides

Upper Calf Creek Falls

Escalante

A remote 88-foot cascade reached by a rugged trail

I-151

Kolob Canyons

Cedar City

The quiet, uncrowded back door to Zion National Park

Nebo Loop Road (FR-015)1

Nebo Loop Summit

Payson

The byway's 9,300-foot high point, with Utah Valley spread out below

UT-181

Snow Canyon State Park

Ivins

Red and white sandstone cliffs with ancient lava flows

SR-201

Ladder Creek Falls and Gardens

Newhalem

A waterfall behind a powerhouse that Seattle's light superintendent strung with colored lights and planted as an exotic garden, to sell the city on its dams.

SR-241

White Bluffs and the Hanford Reach

Othello

Fifty-one miles of the Columbia still running free below pale cliffs, kept undammed by the same secrecy that emptied its farm towns in 1943.

UT-242

Capitol Reef National Park

Torrey

Utah's most underrated national park — a 100-mile wrinkle in the Earth

Hickman Bridge Trail

Torrey

A natural stone bridge framing Capitol Reefs layered cliffs

I-251

Fishers Peak State Park

Trinidad

The flat-topped landmark over Trinidad and Raton Pass, a trophy-hunting ranch until 2019 and Colorado's second-largest state park since 2020, with a summit trail since 2023.

UT-251

Fishlake National Forest

Richfield

Home to Pando — the largest living organism on Earth

I-40 / Historic Route 663

Holbrook

A Santa Fe railroad town once too tough for women and churches, now the seat of Navajo County, gateway to the Petrified Forest, and home to the concrete teepees of the Wigwam Motel.

Williams

The last town on Route 66 to lose its traffic to the interstate — a rail gateway to the Grand Canyon since 1901, bypassed only in 1984 after a court fight, and revived twice over.

Winslow

The town an Eagles lyric made famous — and the home of La Posada, the last great railroad hotel and Mary Colter's finest work, at the southern doorway to Hopi and Navajo country.

I-40 / Historic Route 66 / US-931

Kingman

The working hub of Route 66 in Arizona — a railroad town named for a surveyor, Andy Devine's hometown, and the last real stop before the road's two wildest endings.

US-402

Dinosaur National Monument

Jensen

A wall of 1,500 dinosaur bones still embedded in the rock where they were found

Jordanelle State Park

Heber City

A sapphire reservoir nestled between the Wasatch and Uinta mountains

UT-441

Sheep Creek Canyon Geological Loop

Manila

A drive through twisted and upturned rock layers spanning 600 million years

CA-49 / CA-201

Nevada City

Gaslamps, brick storefronts, and the Nisenan who are still fighting to be recognized on their own ground.

CA-49 / Parrotts Ferry Road1

Columbia State Historic Park

Sonora

The Gem of the Southern Mines, still open for business on a car-free Gold Rush main street.

US-503

Amache National Historic Site

Granada

A Japanese American incarceration camp kept from vanishing by a Granada social studies teacher and three decades of his high school students, a national park unit since 2024.

Austin

A silver boomtown that hit ten thousand and fell to under two hundred — the living ghost town at the high middle of US-50

Hickison Petroglyphs

Austin

Western Shoshone rock art cut into soft white tuff at a 6,500-foot summit — the easiest rock art to meet on the loneliest road

NM-531

El Malpais National Monument

Grants

The badlands south of Grants: lava 3,900 years old from McCartys Crater, a tube system at least seventeen miles long, and an old trail across four lava flows between Zuni and Acoma.

US-602

Oak Flat

Superior

Chi'chil Bildagoteel — the Apache sacred ground a copper mine is set to swallow

Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument

Mountainair

Three Spanish mission churches raised over Tiwa and Tompiro pueblos east of the Manzano Mountains in the 1600s, each of its own stone, and one never finished.

CO-651

Grand Mesa

Cedaredge

An old valley floor turned into a mountaintop by lava, holding more than three hundred lakes, with a road up its western cliffs built by veterans of the CCC.

Historic Route 66 / I-402

Peach Springs

The capital of the Hualapai Nation — the People of the Tall Pines — on Route 66 at the rim of the Grand Canyon, gateway to Grand Canyon West and the only road to the Colorado's floor.

Seligman

The town that refused to die when the interstate went around it — a barber's crusade made this the Birthplace of Historic Route 66, and the reason the Mother Road still runs.

I-703

Colorado National Monument

Grand Junction

A homemade road of fifty-four switchbacks, then the CCC's Rim Rock Drive, nineteen years in the building and finished in 1950.

Fremont Indian State Park

Richfield

The largest known Fremont Indian village ever discovered

San Rafael Swell

Castle Dale

A massive dome of exposed rock layers with slot canyons and natural bridges

I-70 / US-1911

Green River

A small desert town famous for its melons and river adventures

SR-731

Fort Apache Historic Park

Whiteriver

The Army fort that became a boarding school — and came back to the Apache

I-801

Bonneville Salt Flats

Wendover

A blindingly white desert where land speed records are born

CO-821

Maroon Bells

Aspen

Two fourteeners of crumbling red mudstone, called the Deadly Bells since eight people died on them in 1965, and reachable in summer only by reservation.

UT-831

Golden Spike National Historical Park

Brigham City

Where East met West — the spot that connected America by rail

SR-89 / SR-691

Prescott

Arizona's first territorial capital — Whiskey Row, the courthouse square, and a mile-high pine town

SR-89A1

Oak Creek Canyon

Sedona

The switchback drive from red rock to ponderosa on State Route 89A

SR-89A / SR-1791

Sedona

Red-rock skyline, Little Hollywood, and the town Sedona Schnebly gave her name to

US-897

American West Heritage Center

Wellsville

A living history farm spanning 160 acres of Cache Valley

Bear Lake National Wildlife Refuge

Montpelier

The Bear River crosses this marsh twice: once in a canal into Bear Lake, and once in another canal on its way back out.

Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park

Kanab

Sweeping dunes of coral-colored sand framed by red cliffs

Jardine Juniper

Logan

One of the oldest living trees in the world at over 1,500 years old

Logan Canyon

Logan

A winding National Scenic Byway through limestone cliffs and alpine forest

Manti-La Sal National Forest

Manti

Alpine peaks rising above red rock desert

Wind Cave Trail

Logan

A short hike to a triple-arched limestone cave overlooking the canyon

US-89/911

Wellsville Mountains

Wellsville

The steepest mountains in North America for their height

UT-921

Alpine Loop Summit

American Fork

The 8,000-foot high point of the Alpine Loop, face to face with Mount Timpanogos

CO-961

Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site

Eads

Lost even to the survivors' descendants for more than a century, and found again in 1999 by tribal oral history, archives and a metal detector working together.

US-971

Upper Klamath Lake

Klamath Falls

Oregon's largest lake, wide and shallow, where farms, endangered suckers and, since 2024, returning salmon all need the same water.

UT-1111

Bingham Canyon Mine

Copperton

The largest man-made excavation on Earth

UT-1282

Fisher Towers

Moab

Towering dark red pinnacles rising 900 feet from the desert floor

UT-128 Colorado River Road

Moab

A winding road through red rock canyons along the Colorado River

SR-1551

Northrup Canyon

Electric City

A side canyon of the Grand Coulee with a forest in it, springs, a homestead orchard, and a killing over the orchard trees in 1903.

CO-1841

Canyons of the Ancients National Monument

Dolores

The densest field of archaeological sites in the country, and a museum built on the three million objects dug up before a reservoir drowned the Dolores valley.

US-1891

Bridal Veil Falls

Provo

A dramatic double waterfall cascading 607 feet into Provo Canyon

US-1911

Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area

Manila

A turquoise reservoir carved into blazing red canyon walls

CO-1941

Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site

La Junta

A cornfield with foundations in it by the 1960s, rebuilt from an army lieutenant's 1845 drawings in 160,000 machine-made adobes for the Bicentennial.

OR-2051

Malheur National Wildlife Refuge

Burns

A lake-and-marsh refuge set aside for its birds in 1908 that had to buy a river's water to keep them, and now fights the carp that have eaten away its marshes.

SR-2201

Fort Simcoe

White Swan

Mool-Mool, the bubbling springs on a Yakama trail, where the Army built a fort in 1856 and the government ran a boarding school for Yakama children for sixty years.

UT-2611

Moki Dugway

Mexican Hat

A heart-pounding series of switchbacks carved into a cliff face

UT-261 / US-1631

Valley of the Gods

Mexican Hat

A free, uncrowded alternative to Monument Valley

UT-2751

Natural Bridges National Monument

Blanding

Three massive natural bridges carved by ancient streams

UT-2791

Corona Arch Trail

Moab

A massive arch you can hike to without a national park fee

UT-3132

Canyonlands National Park - Island in the Sky

Moab

A flat-topped mesa with views that stretch to infinity

Dead Horse Point State Park

Moab

A 2,000-foot sheer drop overlooking the Colorado River

SR-5041

Coldwater Lake

Castle Rock

A lake that did not exist before 8:32 on the morning of May 18, 1980, below the ridge where the geologist David Johnston radioed his last words.

SR-5421

Artist Point

Glacier

The end of the Mount Baker Highway, a ridge between Baker and Shuksan below the ski area that holds the world record for snow in a single season.

US-5501

Chaco Culture National Historical Park

Nageezi

The great houses of Chaco Canyon at the end of thirteen miles of washboard dirt, an International Dark Sky Park in the middle of one of the country's busiest gas fields.

700 East1

Liberty Park

Salt Lake City

Salt Lake Citys beloved 80-acre urban park since 1882

SR-8441

Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park

Gabbs

A gold camp frozen in "arrested decay" since 1911, beside a quarry of fifty-foot ichthyosaurs left in the rock where they died — the Silver Trails' long exhale into deep time.