Utah Ideas, Must Do and Don'ts

Doing a fly-in to rent and ride Utah for a week next August. So, first things first, do we fly into Vegas or Salt Lake? Would prefer to stay in one or two places for the week rather than packing every night. We typically ride 200-300 miles a day. We will do a little hiking but the day is way more riding than anything else. Off-roading is not in our itinerary. Any ideas as to central location cities for riding on the tarmac? Also, hotel, motel, notel and restaurant ideas are invited!

Las Vegas or Salt Lake City ?
It depends on where you are getting a bike. If you fly-in with your own bike or are you renting one ?
If you are renting one, go to the city with the best rental.
Some good towns to stay in are Panguitch or Torrey, UT.
From either of those towns you can go to all of the Canyons.

Define "central" in your terms. How far do you want to ride each day? Are you also hikers, will you get off the bikes or just ride all day? Are you going offroad, riding dirt, too? Define "cities" in your terms. Would Moab or Hanksville count?

Salt Lake Airport is much easier to get in and out of then the Las Vegas Airport. I go through each at least three times a year.

True Utah

Check out senic highways 12 and 24 in south central Utah. They are as spectacular as it comes. Vegas is closer if you want the south and south western part of Utah, if your looking for the northern part fly into Salt Lake. The southern part is a trip on a motorcycle everyone should make.

The National Parks - Zion, Bryce, Capital Reef, Arches, Canyonlands, etc. in southern Utah are where I would head. Riding is excellent. Hiking available. Scenery is great.

Moab and Cedar City have lots of places to stay. There are several other towns and places down along I-15 too. Torrey is in the middle of things with some accommodations.

The ride down from SLC can be a fun one. Don't know about up from Vegas, but Vegas looks closer, if closer matters.

Las Vegas or Salt Lake?

If you fly into Las Vegas, you will need to plan your 2 hour ride out of Las Vegas and into Utah to occur early in the morning. The 110+ degree heat is rough on locals and will be even worst on someone from outside the area. You will also need to keep this in mind when you return to Las Vegas.

Panguitch is a nice place to base out of. The Color Country Motel is very biker friendly. They will tell you the best places in town to eat. From Panguitch, it is a short ride to Bryce Canyon, Zion, and Capital Reef National Parks. The North Rim of the Grand Canyon can be a day ride for you.

John

I was floored by the beauty of Zion and Bryce Canyon when we had a few days to explore due to a bike breakage (Thank you Salt Lake BMW, for the Loaner!)

Zion:



Bryce:



More pictures and a brief ride report, with maps on my blog, here.

MUST-B.Y.O.B.
DON'T-Get Caught!

All the parks Paul G lists above. Especially Zion, the best of them all!

Fly into LV, and head north east - it's all stunning! If you happen to finish up with Utah earlier than expected (very unlikely), then you can also head west from LV and visit Death Valley, etc - - heading west could also be a weather-dependent fall-back option.

ZION!!!

jda_flhtcui said:

If you fly into Las Vegas, you will need to plan your 2 hour ride out of Las Vegas and into Utah to occur early in the morning. The 110+ degree heat is rough on locals and will be even worst on someone from outside the area. You will also need to keep this in mind when you return to Las Vegas.

Panguitch is a nice place to base out of. The Color Country Motel is very biker friendly. They will tell you the best places in town to eat. From Panguitch, it is a short ride to Bryce Canyon, Zion, and Capital Reef National Parks. The North Rim of the Grand Canyon can be a day ride for you.

John

Click to expand...

+1

In August, SLC. Plus, the ride to either Pangitch or Torrey or Boulder or Escalante will be spectacular. But before I headed South I would definiitely do a day or so in the Heber City, Park City (if you want to afford it) Kamas area. Nice rides up there as well.

A ride up to Kamas, then down Hwy 89 to Pangitch afterr a nights rest would be excellent.
In Panquitch, the Beehive Beemers and the Chain Gang use the Horizon Motel, and their great folks.

There was a thread or two not too long ago on just this subject...

I need ideas for 3 days of riding in Utah in September.

Good roads in Utah.

Many thanks for the ideas. Looks like we'll do a Las Vegas fly-in and focus on the southern half of Utah.
Oops, I stand corrected, we will be flying into SLC and picking up rental bikes there. Grapevine indicates the SLC BMW dealer is going through some troubles so we're thinking Gold Wing or Harley rentals. Any recs?

Hi there - I replied above to this thread. I suggested Las Vegas as a fly-in point. But I hadn't noted the August timeframe (sorry, I need to RTFM). It may well be really hot there. That's not necessarily a problem, but it's definitely a consideration.

The elevation in LV is much lower than most of Utah, including SLC. Most of UT is on the Colorado Plateau, an uplift that covers a good portion of the four corners states. If you start in LV and head for Utah, you will ride on level (low elevation / warmer) ground quite a while, then ride uphill onto the plateau. It'll be a lot like riding up a mountain pass except you won't go back down again any time soon! It will be significantly cooler "up top" and than can be welcome or unwelcome depending on when you go, or at least that's been my experience.

And. . . there are hotels near Zion, more on the west side than on the east, as I recall - Zion also has a lodge (make reservations early). Gotta love Zion!

utah

stay home, nothing to see here..............



but seriously if your going to come anyway and i know you are because it's drop dead make you cry gorgeous.

unkess you're flying into vegas there is no real reason to subject yourself to I-15 but if you're flying into vegas take I-15 north to the hurricane exit and start with the trip through zions park then drive north on US 89 to bryce canyon stay somewhere between the the beginnng of Ut hwy 12 and ruby's inn city. lol yes they made themselves a town. visit bryce canyon which imho is the prettiest park of them all and again jmho makes the grand canyon not seem so grand. ride the rest of hwy 12 to torrey and stay at the chuckwagon inn ask for a room in the rustic part and save a couple bucks. take the money you saved and go to the diablo for dinner awesome mexican food and a respectable margarita. but it is $$$
on the way to torrey make sure you stop at the aquarius plateau overlook just north of escalante miles and miles of nothing as far as the eyes can see it should take your breath away, it does mine every time.

anyway from torrey if you want want to spend a couple days there are excellent day rides both east and west or an all day loop Hwy 24 to capitol reef n.p. fr some hiking, Hwy 24 towards Hanksville then 24 North to Goblin Valley S.P. for some hiking. North from Goblin Valley to I-70 then west to Utah hwy 72 and back to Torrey Ut 72 is a hidden gem about 25 miles of twisty alpine forest and nearly never more than one or two cars. I think the guy that engineered it rode motorcycles. On the way back to Torrey stop in Bicknell at the Sunglow and have the pickle pie or the pinto bean pie yeah I know it sounds .. but trust me on this one you won't be disappointed.

when you are ready to move on from torrey go east to hanksville and then south along the bicentennial hwy Ut 95 the road takes you through glen canyon past lake powell. just past natural bridges n.m. take Ut. 261 South to the muley point overlook and the moki dugway ( moki dugway is graded dirt ) but my friend did ride it on my ducati 900 sl so it's not that bad. and the view of monument valley is priceless. from the bottom take St 163-Us191 north to Moab and Arches N.P. don't pass on Dead Horse Point S.P. either. If you are starting from Salt Lake there are some other options to do all I just described.

Send me a snail addy off list and I'll send you a map with highlights and a narrative where to.

Moab to SW Utah is on my ride list, too, and I worked up a map or two which I can post when I find them.

Thanks to those who posted those pictures. Amazin'

--Doug

are you in Salt Lake? I'm not sure how to get your address other than white pages.