We just got back from Utah so I thought I would share my favorite places and some tips and tricks traveling with dogs. (We had 3 with us)
I had a bit of trouble finding a hotel that would take three dogs. Many were a 2 dog limit, and many wanted to charge per dog. There was one dog friendly hotel I did find, but rooms were close to $300 per night and that was not in the budget. I tried to find a camp site, but with such short notice… they were all booked. Then I decided to check KOA. They had 3 camp site spots left, and had no limit on the number of dogs as long as they were well behaved and stayed on their leash. Not a problem.
While I LOVED this KOA location as our central hub, it was a bit out of the way and most of our adventures were a 30-60 minute drive from our tent location. However… we were close to town, really close to quite a few hikes (Use the All trails app and you will see a dozen hikes for any skill level within a 10 minute drive from the camp site.. so this was a plus) Also, if you do choose to stay here… do take note that the camp site is ON the main road. It is very loud, I heard sirens go by every night (Less than 100 feet from my head) So if you require complete silence to sleep… this isn’t the KOA for you. Unless you have an RV.
The camp sites are small, but we were able to put a 4 person tent and a 2 person tent with room for our Camping chairs. We were able to park the car just steps away from our site, and were told to stay on our little gravel patch. They had a picnic table, each site had their own water spout (I really liked this because it allowed us to stay away from other people, because Covid…), and a fire pit. They also had bathrooms which were nice, and there were two shower stalls. Since there are only 6 tent sites, and the rest are RV sites… we almost always had the bathroom and shower areas to ourselves.
They also have an Ice cream set up in the lobby. We got some every night.
Now for the adventures. My absolute favorite part of the trip was visiting the Sand Dunes. This was a bit of a drive. We went to Zion National Park, then drove here after. Its about a 30 Minute drive from the East entrance of Zion. The dogs had a blast trying to run up and down the sand dunes, we found a picnic table and made lunch and spent quite a bit of time here. 100% recommend if you bring kids or dogs.
Next on the list was Zion National Park. It is $35 to get in. Now I should add, Zion National Park is not dog friendly. We knew this going in. There is one trail that dogs can hike inside the park, its about 3 miles. It was pretty hot out by the time we got to the trail… so we only did about a mile of it before we went back. But it was pretty cool to see what we saw from a walking point of view.
You are allowed to drive all the way through the park. We took this route, and it was AMAZING. We pulled over a few times, rolled down the windows and poked around and took photos of ourselves at a few of the viewpoints. We drove from one entrance to the other. (Then we went to the sand dunes I just talked about, then on the way back to our tent… we decided to drive through the park the opposite direction and that was so worth it. We saw things we missed the first time)
The photos below are the East East entrance on the left, and the dog friendly trail on the right.
Next up, Sand Hollow State Park. If you follow us on Instagram… you know we are big paddle board fans. So… we went here to go paddle boarding. We brought our paddle boards, it was $20 to get into the park, and we took off where we found a spot. I believe there are paddle board or kayak rentals… we saw quite a few boards with life jackets strapped on which is typical of a rental place. There were many boats and jet skis, this was a really cool spot to spend half the day. We would have spent more time here but the lack of shade and the heat got to us after a few hours… worth the visit though if you have a kayak, paddle board or boat. Or just want to picnic by some water.
Also, If you are looking for a great life jacket for your dog, CLICK HERE.
Its not the one Pigpen is wearing in this photo, but its by far my favorite and I regret straying from that brand. We go through life jackets yearly. I am bad about rinsing them and we usually paddle board in salt water.
I hope this gets your Southern Utah trip off to a great start. Because of Covid, we wanted to keep to ourselves so we bought our own food and a little stove… so I have no restaurant recommendations to share. Happy Traveling!
Chevy The Boston 