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National Park Trip-Planning Weekend! Free National Park Cheat Sheet Pack with any guide. Orders $150+ get our printed 13 Epic Western Road Trips book (70 copies only)
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ONLY $139 – $462 VALUE
Experience the West like never before with our Grand Circle Bundle! Get itineraries and audio tours for Zion, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Arches, Canyonlands, the Grand Canyon, and Monument Valley—plus an exclusive bonus: a comprehensive Grand Circle Road Trip Overview Guide ($55 Value) with 6 road trip plans that include starting in Las Vegas, Phoenix, or Salt Lake City. 11-17 Day Tour.
1 Day Itinerary & Audio Guide including Bright Angel Point, Cape Royal, Angels Window + the best hikes and viewpoints
2-3 Day Itinerary & Audio Guide including hikes, the best viewpoints, walking tour of the village, the Grand Canyon Railway, and mule rides.
2-3 Day Itinerary & Audio Guide including Antelope Canyon, Horseshoe Bend, and Rainbow Bridge + amazing hikes and water adventures.
1-2 Day Itinerary including Monument Valley Tribal Park, scenic drive, Bears Ears, Moki Dugway and other great hikes, viewpoints, and nearby hidden gems.
2-3 Day Itinerary & Audio Guide including the Narrows, Mt Carmel Road and Tunnel, Angels Landing, How to Ride the Shuttles + other amazing hikes and nearby adventures outside the park.
1-2 Day Itinerary & Audio Guide including Bryce Amphitheater, Queens Garden/Navajo Loop, Scenic Route 12 + other great hikes, viewpoints, and nearby state parks and activities.
1-3 Day Itinerary including the Fruita Historic District, Hickman Bridge, petroglyphs, and the Loop the Fold Drive and Goblin Valley.
5-Day Itinerary & Audio Guide including Delicate Arch, Devils Garden, the Windows, Mesa Arch, Shafer Trail, Chesler Park + the best viewpoints, petroglyphs, and fun activities in Moab and the nearby state parks.
With the Ultimate Western Bundle, get every guide we have now, plus every new guide we create, in one massively discounted bundle. Perfect if you plan to visit several parks in the West!
What You Get
Plus everything we create next:
Try the guides. If they don’t make your trip easier, more fun, and less stressful, email us after your trip for a refund
Real human customer service. We’ll respond to emails within one business day- no AI or auto-generated responses.
If you travel using our guides and don’t love them so much that you would tell your best friend about us, we’ll give you your money back. Read more.
Buy Your Guides
Receive Email with Downloadable Links
Print and/or Save Your Guides and Enjoy Your Trip
Watch Cheryl show you how to plan out your travel day in minutes.
Hey, we’re Matt and Cheryl, and we are on a mission to help people have amazing vacations. Not only do we write easy-to-follow itineraries, but we also love to share interesting stories in our audio guides about all of our favorite places!
We live in Utah, just four hours away from awesome national parks like Zion and Yellowstone, and have spent our lives exploring the West and the Rocky Mountains. We often travel with both sets of our retired parents (they like each other!) and our four teenagers (who like to travel…sometimes).
We met in a history of Utah class at Weber State University and tied the knot in 2002. Matt worked for Social Security and taught adjunct history classes at our alma mater. Cheryl taught special education for 28 years and continues to volunteer by teaching a weekly dance fitness class.
We took a shot at our dream in 2020 and started making YouTube videos about the national parks we know so well. We now have over 20 million views and have sold over 24,000 guides. We are delighted to help travelers fulfill dreams of their own!
We love trying out all the activities and working with local experts to give the best, most up-to-date travel advice out there.
At We're in the Rockies, we believe in education and donate 5% of the proceeds of your purchase to the Gene Sessions History Scholarship to make education affordable to future park rangers and history teachers.
You can start your trip in Las Vegas, Phoenix, or Salt Lake City. Our Grand Circle Overview gives 6 ideas of how to do this trip starting from different locations.
This guide can work year-round, but was written with the months of March to October in mind.
Keep in mind that Zion, Arches, Page, and Monument Valley can get very hot.
We like to visit early May after the spring break crowds have cleared out, as well as the middle of September and October.
Some years, the Narrows is very swift in the spring and can be closed down for safety reasons.
Keep in mind that Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef are at a higher elevation than the rest of the parks and can be 15-20 degrees cooler.
We have lived in Utah our entire lives and visited each of these parks several times. We have done practically everything both inside the parks and in the surrounding areas.
We travel with both sets of our retired parents and our 4 kids (who are now teens), so we have a pretty good radar on the interests of most types of travelers.
We recommend what we believe are the absolute best spots in the park and give backup options for longer hikes or things that cost.
We give star ratings and approximate prices to help you decide which activities are the best value for you!
We are of the mindset that you have a plan, so you can be flexible.
We lay out what we believe are the best activities for your time and money, but we all have different preferences.
Because each activity listed has a star rating, approximate time frame, and cost, you’ll easily be able to adjust to best suit your group’s interests.
We surveyed our customers and they reported that our guides saved them 10-20 hours of trip planning research per guide, which means this Grand Circle Bundle could save you 40-60 hours of research, on average.
Although much of the information included in this guide can be found with significant research, this guide combines what you need to know into one place and it is from a source committed to giving you the best information.
This guide cost us over $15,000 to create when you combine travel expenses, map creation, and formatting. In addition, we have spent hundreds of hours visiting these parks and doing additional research. The audio guide alone was over 180 hours of labor (but of course, a labor of love!)
Instead of you sorting through an outdated, 500+ page travel book filled with flowery language from a travel writer, we get right to the point by grouping the best sites into days to minimize drive time and help you know what you can reasonably accomplish. Also included are driving routes from various starting locations. We pay for all of our travel and our loyalty is to you. If something is a waste of time or money – we tell you.
Many of our travelers enjoy the confirmation that they have already created a good plan and may even find a thing or two to add to it.
Other travelers may find that our plan is similar to what they had already pieced together on their own.
If you’ve already spent hours planning, you may not find maximum value in this guide.
If you aren’t sure which guides to get, email us at mattandcheryl@wereintherockies.com and tell us where you want to go. A real human will get back to you within one business day.
Yes! We travel with our 4 children and both sets of our parents. Although not every activity is for everyone, there are always backup suggestions. We don’t recommend Angels Landing for young children.
We write these guides so all the work you should need to do is obtain your lodging and reservations. We include maps, the time needed to complete drives and activities, and lodging recommendations. We put boxes throughout the guide indicating it’s an item that you will need to take care of before you leave. We also give links to websites we think you should check before you leave.
You will need a car to drive between the parks. Zion and Bryce Canyon both have a free shuttle system that will get you to some areas of the parks, but we love having our own car to go to the places the shuttles don’t go.
Yes. We give approximate time frames that are needed to complete an activity. The schedule is generally not so packed that you have to be a quick traveler. But if you know you generally need more time, you can make adjustments. If you are quick, there are suggestions for additional activities.
This is a digital download, so it will be EMAILED to you. That way, you can have access immediately and have the option to download it to any device you want.
Many travelers, including us, prefer to print the itinerary and take it with us as we travel.
The itinerary and audio guide are available immediately upon purchase, right on this webpage. You will also receive an email within 30 minutes with download links in case you need to revisit the links and download the items later. If you don’t receive your email, check your junk mail folder. If it’s not there, contact mattandcheryl@wereintherockies.com, and we’ll be in touch with you within 1 business day. Also, the guides will be available in your account if you choose to establish one (we highly encourage it).
You need cell reception to download the audio guides. Once they are downloaded, no cell reception is needed.
Most people download the audio guides to their phone before they leave.
Just in case you are wondering, an average audio guide takes 150 MB of storage space.
National parks constantly change, including timed-entry requirements, construction, fires, and closures. To keep you updated on the most current things going on, we have a Parks Updates page that we update every week with important information. We recommend you look at this as soon as you begin planning your trip, as well as a few days before you leave.
Guides are automatically updated to the latest version when you create an account.
In addition to that, we also send an email notification out when a guide is updated. Just make sure to stay subscribed to our email list so we can reach you.
Because the download is a PDF file, you can do it on any device: computer, iPhone, Android, tablet, etc.
Stuff like this happens. We get it.
If you created an account, just log in again and download your guides.
If you didn’t create an account or forgot your password, just email us, and we can resend your links.
For step-by-step instructions (including pictures) check out our Help With Downloads page.
If you still need help, reach out to us at mattandcheryl@wereintherockies.com. We’ll get back to you as soon as possible to help. We’re even happy to jump on a phone call with you if needed.
Sort of. The parks are open year-round and this guide will work with a few exceptions. These parks do get snow, making some of the trails dangerous, and the shuttles do NOT run in some months in the winter.
Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef are extremely cold in the winter. We do not recommend visiting these parks then.
Yes!! We update our guides at a minimum of once a year and offer free lifetime updates. We encourage you to purchase the guide as soon as you know you will be traveling. It will help you determine which areas to stay and how many days to obtain lodging. Upon purchase, you’ll be guided to create an account on our website. If we update the guide, it will automatically show in your account. Stay subscribed to our email list. We send out emails when we make updates.
It is not required, but is HIGHLY recommended. We encourage you to create an account when purchasing the guides because you’ll have access to the links at any time.
You will have access to the updated guide for life. We generally send an email announcement when we do an update as well.
We believe that once you buy a guide from us, you should be able to use it to visit a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th time.
If you created an account, just log in and download your guide again.
If you didn’t create an account, just email mattandcheryl@wereintherockies.com and let us know you want us to resend your guide links.
We put approximate price ranges on all our activities so you know what to expect. The good news is that many things in this guide are free once you pay for entrance into the national park!
Although we do suggest some hikes, we offer plenty of alternatives if hiking is not desirable, including viewpoints and drives.
If you purchased a guide that includes an audio guide, here’s what you’ll need:
If you need technical support, check out our help with downloads page. If you are still struggling, you can email us at mattandcheryl@wereintherockies.com
$139.00
So so pleased I got the Grand Circle Bundle. it has made my planning so much easier & quicker, plus have found quite a few places that we will now visit that we didn’t know about. Love Matt & Cheryll’s honesty. Also love getting the regular emails with ideas and great information. Highly recommend to everyone that is thinking of travelling around Utah and Arizona.
Wow! We recently returned home from a fantastic 11-day camping excursion in Utah and Arizona and these guides helped us immensely. We’re a family of 5, with kids 5, 8, and 11. I wasn’t able to plan far enough in advance to reserve campsites inside the National Parks, and I was feeling pretty overwhelmed. I ran across your website and YouTube videos, and we decided to invest in your Grand Circle guides. My planning experience became much less stressful and I was quickly able to identify where we really wanted to go and for how many days. (In the end, we went to Arches, Canyonlands—Island in the Sky and Needles, Grand Canyon South Rim, Page/Glen Canyon, and Zion.) In hindsight, I honestly don’t know how smoothly our trip would have gone, and I know we would have missed some amazing things if we hadn’t used these guides.
I printed the guides at home for the parks we were going to visit (black and white, as a booklet—they were small but readable) and I carried them with me, consulting them beforehand, to make our plan for the day, and while we in the parks. We couldn’t do everything that sounded fun and cool, but the details about the different hikes, etc, in your guides helped us gauge what our kids could realistically do, and prioritize based on the star ratings. I can’t wait to go back (maybe in 5 years when our kids’ legs and stamina have grown)! And I’m thrilled to know that if there has been any updates to the guides, we’ll have access to those too!
Seriously, the best money we spent on this very fun vacation. When we venture to Yellowstone/Tetons/Badlands next summer, you can be sure that we’ll be picking up more of your guides!
Everyone talks about how amazing the National Parks in Utah are, but it’s so overwhelming to know where to begin. We had perused the usual Utah guide books, but really needed guidance on how best to plan our routes and how many days to reserve in each location. The Grand Circle bundle essentially paid for itself; your recommendations on where to stay affordably was amazing, and saved us far more than we spent for this essential resource. Linking all the Parks together, including all the unique state parks we didn’t even think of visiting, truly rounded out our entire experience. Finally – the bonus of having your detailed audio guides available for the drives made us feel like we had a private tour guide along for the ride. Thank you for the perfect trip; we’ll definitely be choosing another guide pack from you again for our next one!
You guys are awesome. The material you have developed has been essential in my planning. There is so much to think about the details you’ve provided are invaluable. We’re taking a 9-day trip to Vegas, Hoover Dam, Zion, Bryce, Page, Southern and Western.
I tell everyone about your guides. Thanks to your guides We had the best ever 3 generations family trip including 2 rambunctious toddlers, 4 young adventurous outdoorsy adults and 2 over 60 slow pokes to Yellowstone and the Tetons, thanks to your guides our 8 day plan was spot on for timing … in the gate by 8, visit sights & play, picnic lunches, nap time (toddlers and over 60s) to coincide with longer car rides between the major areas, visit sights & play, knowing to look up ahead of time where to eat especially picnic areas with grill available for our grilled picnic supper near Canyon Village, because there are not many picnic areas with grills in Yellowstone. Oh, and renting the spotting scope and knowing when & where to go for wolf sighting was such a memorable outing for my husband and adult son. Thanks so much.
We did a trip to the Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce, and Mesa Verde in May. I bought one of your trip bundles. The audio tours are worth the whole purchase price. This trip had a lot of road time, and we’d listen to stories/information as we got closer to a park. This added so much to our trip. My teens would ask if we had more stories as we were driving. I love hearing more information when we visit somewhere, and this was like having a personal tour guide in our car, talking to us. When in the parks, we would see and recognize things that would have otherwise been missed.
We purchased the Grand Circle Bundle and were well pleased. Flew into Vegas and spent mostly 8 days touring the parks. Much driving. If you are renting a car, please get a comfortable one. Matt’s description of Kolob Canyon and the Kolob Road were worth seeing. Kolob was my wife’s favorite. I don’t think we would have seen the Ghost town close to Zion without it. We spent three days around Zion, two days close to Bryce, one day in Pace AZ and one day at the Grand Canyon. In reality, we drove, and drove, and drove all around these areas. Matt’s audio is awesome, there is so much information. We were having trouble with the rental car audio, so we didn’t really make use of the audio until the end. The written descriptions were helpful and there were things we did as an older couple that the written guide helped us find we otherwise would have missed. Plenty to see, everything does not have to be a strenuous activity. There is so much to see and do in this region, and I wish we would have had more time. I highly recommend purchasing the guides. We give them 15 out of 5 stars! Well worth it! We hope to come back to that area of the country again. Life is short, eat the pie. Especially at the Thunderbird
We’re doing the Grand Circle this week with your itenerariea and they have been super helpful so far — just like they were when we did Yellowstone and the Tetons a couple years ago. We’re also enjoying Matt’s audios as we drive. Thanks so much!