Southwest Trip
 

I'm planning several trips. This March I plan to hit these areas in the southwest in this order. Can everyone please help me pick specific CITIES and specific THINGS TO DO/activites?

Also, while researching these locations, I was once told to reverse the order for weather reasons. Let me know if that is true.

I'm in my early 30's --- and like fishing, outdoors, hiking, sports, eating healthy food, drinking unique beer, drinking wine, bars/music/jazz all great.

I'll have a rental car the entire time - and I plan to fly to areas where the drive is more than 4+ hours.

Money/time is not an issue, I can go wherever and stay wherever.

Wyoming?
San Francisco CA (yosemite)
Utah
Las Vegas NV
Scottsdale AZ
Tuscan AZ
Flagstaff AZ
Page AZ
Sante Fe NM
Austin TX
Dallas? Houston? Fort Worth? TX

Specific suggestions are much appreciated! Thank you!!

<i>Can everyone please help me pick specific CITIES and specific THINGS TO DO/activites? </i>

Guidebooks might be helpful: http://www.fodors.com/world/north-am...uidebooks.html

Can't help at all really w/o knowing how long you have for the trip . . .

Also, for someone who wants the outdoors/fishing/etc - you've mainly listed cities/towns and no parks except Yosemite.

Give us more info (including how many weeks you have) and we can help.

But yes, a guidebook or two would be a good idea.

Janisj: I have no time limit. I wanted to spend a month or so traveling this area. More if you felt necessary.

If you have a month and plan to leave in March you need to be aware of what will and will not be open. Yosemite valley will be open but the higher parts of the park will probably not, they were not in late April when we visited. The south rim of Grand Canyon will be open the north rim will not. There will probably be snow in Wyoming and could be snow in Utah, very likely at higher elevations,

Southern Utah, Flagstaff and Page should be ok, but may have an occasional snow storm even in April. The southern Arizona sites will be fine.

Put some of the places you want to see in the search box at the top and look at trip reports from people who have done a similar trip.

Enjoy the planning and the trip.

That's great that you have what sounds like total freedom to do what/go where you please! Agree that Wyoming will probably be iffy at best in March due to weather; opening at Yellowstone, Tetons, etc., is largely determined by how much snow they got over the winter.

I would concentrate my attention on Southern Utah, Northern Arizona, New Mexico. Do you know where you'll fly into? Las Vegas, Phoenix, SLC, ?? That would help us advise you better.

Places that would cater to your interests:
* Fishing: Page/Lake Powell, Lees Ferry
* Hiking, sports: this whole area has a ton of it, easy, hard and everything in between. Grand Canyon, Sedona, Zion, Bryce, Moab (Arches/Canyonlands), Taos, Santa Fe... just to name a few. There's no shortage of awesome hikes in the Southwest!
* Eating healthy food, drinking unique beer, drinking wine, bars/music: Flagstaff AZ is where it's at! Lots of good restaurants (and a wide variety of them), bars (wide variety of those too, many with live music), etc.

The biggest stumbling block you'll come across at this point is lodging, or more specifically, lack of availability in some of the parks, namely Grand Canyon. If for some reason you're unable to find lodging in the Grand Canyon or Lake Powell, you might plan to hang out in Flagstaff for 3-4 days and just make day trips to these parks using Flagstaff as your "base of operations." Here's a site with some promo codes for local hotels ->: http://bit.ly/W3g0Ov or shop around the usual places and you're bound to find something you like.

Also: noticed that Sedona AZ wasn't on your list, it definitely should be. It's just 1 hour from Flagstaff, 2 hours from Grand Canyon. Absolutely gorgeous, here again, lots of good hikes to be enjoyed and weather is relatively warm in comparison to Flag, GCN, etc.

No matter what you decide, you should probably plan on purchasing an America the Beautiful Federal Lands Access Pass. For just $80, this card gets you access to all National Parks, Monuments and other Federal Fee areas in the US for 1 year's time. With the trip you're looking at taking, I think it would definitely pay for itself.

Good luck!

A couple of quick observations. From your other threads it really doesn't seem you have unlimited time. You plan on spending April and May touring the SE.

IMO you have the two trips in the wrong order. March is much too early for some of the places you want to visit on this itinerary.

April/May is still too early for the Yosemite back country and/or Wyoming. But your chances for cold/snow in Yosemite Valley, the Utah parks, Grand Canyon, etc will be much less if you flip the two trips.

If you truly do have total freedom - then do the trips when they make the most sense.

If you do have time to do all this, I would reverse the order of your trip. We ran into snow in early June in Wyoming, for example.

Lee Ann

Agree that would work from the warmest spots toward the coldest when planning your trip.

Park City is great to visit any time of the year. My husband and I moved out here from the East Coast last year. We live in Salt Lake right now but plan on retiring to Park city. Hiking, Sking, shopping, great food.

OP has been identified as a troll on Lonely Planet.

You might want to factor this into your response.

I had a hunch that <i>might</i> be the case looking at all the unlimited-time trips he is asking about.

red flag when they want someone to plan an entire trip for them in multiple states/cities/etc for that amount of time.

Whew, so glad this isn't a real trip. That zigzagging itinerary back and forth had me dizzy.

Glad for the troll alert. His questions were getting tiresome.