How did you travel between sites? Car or plane or combination?
If you have a detailed itinerary (how many days at each site, hotels, etc), could you please PM me? Going to all 50 states/as many national monuments as possible is one of my goals.
I drove my own car and put 7,200 miles on it because I came all the way from South Florida.
The itinerary follows the order of the photos. Took me 3 days to drive to Carlsbad NM then I basically began a counter-clockwise loop (some of these I didn't post any photos of):
- White Sands National Monument, NM
- Santa Fe, NM
- Bandelier National Monument, NM
- Capulin Volcano, NM
- Pikes Peak, CO
- Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs, CO
- Denver Downtown
- but stayed in Longmont, CO to be near Rocky Mountain National Park
- Grand Junction, CO - Colorado National Monument, and day tripped to Black Canyon of the Gunnison, then back to Grand Junction
- Moab, UT - Arches and Canyonlands National Parks. Allow 2-3 hrs to hike to the Delicate Arch and start early when it's cooler if it's Summer.
- I skipped Capital Reef National Park because even just driving along I-70 has some amazing scenery.
- Bryce Canyon, Zion and Grand Canyon North Rim are all in the same area but there are only small towns to stay in nearby.
My employer has 15-20% discounts on most hotels through the Perkspot website. I tried to plan about 3 days ahead and book hotels accordingly. Some parks only need half a day to see (the ones with mostly drive-up viewpoints, or 0.5 mile hikes). Others with longer hikes like Arches would usually take one full day, but possibly 2 days to see. I was usually out of the hotel by 7am to maximize daylight, and packed lunch like a sandwich because some of these parks don't have restaurants.
