Our itinerary works if you’re visiting Zion for one, two, or three days. It also includes options for those wishing to hike less but still get the Zion experience.
You can’t fail with our easy to follow instructions including destinations, arrival times and 80+ images and maps to keep you on course. Plus, our gear recommendations to crush Zion hikes.
Navigate Springdale and the Zion Canyon Shuttle like a pro with our easy-to-follow instructions + best stops to get off.
Angels Landing, The Narrows, Kolob, Mt. Carmel and more are all part of the plan, including some treasures that are local favorites.
Find your heavenly place on some of the less visited but equally beautiful hikes and sites of Southern Utah.
We give you detailed maps, and step by step instructions for parking, renting gear and and taking the shuttle.
You can easily turn your visit to Zion National Park into an Epic Utah Mighty 5 Road Trip! In just 5-8 days, you can experience playful Arches and Canyonlands, charming Capitol Reef, and majestic hoo-doos of Bryce Canyon. These guides include transition days between the parks with lots of things to do along the way including great cities like St. George (Zion guide) and amazing state parks like Kodachrome, Goblin Valley, Devil’s Garden, and Snow Canyon… just to name a few!
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.
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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 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 22 years ago. 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 10,000,000 views and have sold over 12,000 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 preservation and donate 5% of the proceeds of your purchase to the Zion Forever Project to ensure access and enjoyment for future generations.
The One Day Guide is the first day of the Multi-Day Guide.
The One Day Guide does not include the audio stories or the things to do outside the park, including some of Utah’s other state parks.
This guide will work whether you enter from the East or Springdale entrance but is written as if you are entering from the Springdale entrance.
This guide can work year-round but was written with the months of March-October in mind.
Keep in mind that Zion can get very crowded on ANY holiday.
We like to visit Zion in late April 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.
Zion is one of our favorite national parks and we have done practically everything both inside the park 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 back up 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, 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 $7,878 to create when you combine travel expenses, map creation, and formatting. In addition, we have spent hundreds of hours visiting this park and doing additional research. The audio guide alone was over 60 hours of labor (but of course, a labor of love!)
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.
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 Angel’s 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 (areas to stay-not actual hotels). 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 your leave.
The Zion Canyon Shuttle can pick you up at the Zion Canyon Visitor Center and take you through Zion Canyon.
There is also a Springdale shuttle that will get you from the town of Springdale to the Zion Canyon Visitor Center.
We like to ride the shuttle but we also like having our own car so we can get to other areas of the park that the shuttle doesn’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.
If you are interested in 5-8 day road trip where you see fantastic red rock formations… yes! It’s a great addition to Zion!
Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon, Arches and Canyonlands are amazing national parks and it’s really cool to see them all in one trip.
We have guides for all of these and offer an automatic discount. 10% off when you purchase 2 guides, 20% off when you purchase 3 or more.
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. When you purchase a guide, you have access to 18 months of free updates.
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.
Yes, this guide will work with a few exceptions. Zion does get some snow making some of the trails dangerous and the shuttles do NOT run some months in the winter. The Kolob area may have some inaccessible roads.
Yes!! We update our guides as needed, but write the concepts to intentionally be as timeless as possible. 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 for up to 18 months after purchase.
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 through your account (another reason to create an account) for up to 18 months. We generally send an email announcement when we do an update as well.
We put approximate price ranges on all our activities so you know what to expect. The good news is that most 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
$29.00
We have just returned from our tour of the Arizona and Utah. I would like to thank you both personally for your excellent guides (we bought the ones for Zion, Bryce, Moab (Arches) and Grand Canyon). They were superbly edited and a great help to planning our hikes and excursions.
Matt and Cheryl helped make our trip to Zion the most beautiful experience I think we’ve ever had. With them, I don’t know if it would’ve been as special. I hope anyone considering these guides don’t even think twice and get them right away. They were a lifesaver and a blessing!! Thank you!!
Excellent info for our Yellowstone grand Teton trip – 9 days watched your u tube videos over & over
Highlight of our trip was a private at tour in the Tetons – followed our guide in our own atv high above Jackson hole.
Going to Yosemite- Zion-Bryce and maybe horseshoe bend. Flying into Frezno out of Vegas – 9 days total 2 days in Vegas. We have 3 days 2 nights for Zion – Bryce maybe horseshoe bend
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My family of 5 which is my husband and myself and 3 kids ages 10, 8, and 6 just came back from our trip to the mighty 5 in Utah! We had the most amazing trip. We are from Pa and have never been out west and had no idea where to even begin planing for our trip or how to use our time wisely. I’m so thankful that I stumbled upon Matt and Cheryl’s YouTube videos and these guides! So full of extremely valuable information purposefully written out in an easy to use not overwhelming way and maps and wonderful audio guide stories to play on your way to the park when you’re driving or while driving through the park. The whole family loved learning more about the beautiful places we were visiting. I can’t recommend it enough! It really felt like we were traveling with friends who knew the best hikes and how to get to them, the best places to eat, and told engaging relevant stories along the way. I also loved how this guide prepared you to ride the shuttles which seemed so complicated at a glance but after reading about it here it was so simple to understand.
We are from the Netherlands and this summer, we went on a road trip in the West of the U.S. for the first time. Besides a couple of cities, we definitely wanted to see and hike some parks during our 3 and a half weeks of holiday. Planning the big trip, we found Matt & Cheryl on the internet. Their (audio) guides (Yellowstone, Grand Canyon and Zion) as well as some of their YouTube videos were a fantastic help in preparing our trip, especially as we had very limited time to visit each park and did not exactly know what to expect. The guides are very well researched, clear, full of practical information and with some great insider tips (one of our most memorable highlights was a sunrise in Grand Canyon with nobody else but our family – just awesome…). The audio guides give some interesting background information and are entertaining to listen to when on the road.
If we come back for another park, we will surely buy the according guide again. And hopefully we can come back – what a beautiful nature you have over there:)!
We absolutely recommend We’re in the Rockies.
A big shout out for your itineraries! I bought this one as well as two more for our upcoming trip and they have been quite a worthwhile and essential part of our trip planning with great info that saves hours and hours of research, they are great bang for the buck.
Thanks for you effort!
We stayed 3 days and 2 nights in Zion last week and followed the recommendations of this guide. I was traveling with my husband and our two teens and everything was easy and went according to plan as I knew what to expect and where and when to go. I HIGHLY recommend it! All Matt and Cheryl’s recommendations were spot on!
We used Matt and Cheryl’s guide and YouTube videos to visit Zion . We particularly needed to understand the shuttle system and hiking the narrows. As suggested, we took the scenic route from Bryce to Zion and came through the tunnel/switchbacks—wonderful . We suggest buying them early to help with accommodations. Matt’s audio guides are interesting. He is a great storyteller. Thank you Matt and Cheryl