Last year, I took a week-long road trip from Loveland down to Phoenix, stopping to see the sites along the way. As I only had a week, though, I was unable to see a number of things I wanted to. Two weekends ago, I got the chance to see at least some of them. Instead of going home, I flew to Las Vegas with two others on my project, and one of them flew his girlfriend in from Chicago. My plane was delayed in Phoenix due to weather, but eventually we all made it to Las Vegas, and then we set out on the two hour drive to Cedar City, Utah.
Cedar City is a very small town, but it has a Hampton Inn, which means we were able to use some of our many Hilton points. We used Cedar City as a base for the weekend; the first day we went to Bryce Canyon and the north rim of the Grand Canyon. The second day, we drove to Page to see Upper Antelope Canyon, and then we made our way to Monument Valley, only to drive all the way back to Cedar City after just under an hour there. The next morning, we made our way down to Lake Mead to see the Hoover Dam, and then we finally went to the airport. It's a good thing we had unlimited miles on the rental, as we put around 1300 miles on it.
After that weekend, my list of places to see in the Southwest is significantly shorter. I still want to see Canyonlands at some point, and I would love to see Death Valley and the Bonneville salt flats among other places.