Spirit of the Southwest

Ten nights and around 1,600 miles in a loop from Las Vegas through six national parks, with a free day at Moab. Riders bring their own bike or rent one.

Springdale comes first by way of the Silver Reef mining ghost town, with Zion National Park alongside, then Torrey through the Zion-Mount Carmel tunnel, Bryce Canyon and its hoodoos, the Hell’s Backbone bridge and Boulder Pass.

Moab follows through Capitol Reef, with the Waterpocket Fold, Native American petroglyphs and a ghost town, and Arches at sunset, and the free day there offers hiking, climbing, rafting, canyoneering or skydiving depending on appetite.

Bluff comes next on the Old Spanish Trail, then Boulder by way of the Trail of the Ancients, Bears Ears National Monument and the Moki Dugway, three miles of unpaved switchbacks cut into a cliff in the 1950s, with the Burr Trail switchbacks after it. Page follows in Arizona with Grand Staircase-Escalante, then Kanab, known locally as Utah’s Little Hollywood for the westerns filmed around it, reached by way of the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, which takes a fraction of the visitors the South Rim does and is open only in the warmer months. The Valley of Fire closes the loop into Las Vegas. Prices are quoted in US dollars. Six national parks in ten nights sounds like a sprint, and the distances in this corner of Utah are short enough that it is nothing of the sort. The free day at Moab is well placed too, since it falls at the midpoint and the town has more to do in it than anywhere else on the route.