The 100 Best Places to Raise a Family

[TripletDaddy]

Actually, Utah has an In and Out Burger now, just outside of St George.

[RC Vikings]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

Seriously, are there any museums in Utah outside LDS museums? I guess the U of U has a pretty good museum of natural history. Is there an art museum in Salt Lake?

How about the flight museum at Roy?

I also just wanted to point out that Idaho had one more city (Boise) on the list then Utah.

[ERCougar]

Ok...how about we settle it this way...
SU can lecture his 4yo on ancient history, avoiding at all costs any references to Mormonism, and DDD and Mars can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the 5 million other visitors in their exhaust-filled drives/traffic jams through Yosemite.

I guess I'll just have to take my poorly-educated backwoods children through the Zion slot canyons.

We're better off with y'all in your ignorant bliss.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Originally Posted by ERCougar

Ok...how about we settle it this way...
SU can lecture his 4yo on ancient history, avoiding at all costs any references to Mormonism, and DDD and Mars can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the 5 million other visitors in their exhaust-filled drives/traffic jams through Yosemite.

I guess I'll just have to take my poorly-educated backwoods children through the Zion slot canyons.

We're better off with y'all in your ignorant bliss.

Amen, brother.

We are hiking the Subway again this year in June. Can't wait.

[ERCougar]

Originally Posted by Jeff Lebowski

Amen, brother.

We are hiking the Subway again this year in June. Can't wait.

The Subway's a great hike, but if you haven't done it yet, you need to make it to Mystery Canyon. Permit/Lottery system like the Subway. There are 10+ rappels through the hike with the last one being a 100-footer down a waterfall into the Narrows. You hike the last mile or two of the Narrows to finish the hike. You can easily do it in a day. Really cool and more accessible than a lot of the other slots (and therefore really popular...).

I just wish they'd build a museum at the end.

[ERCougar]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

National park is of course a political designation, and places designated national parks invariably weren't in high demand for anything else when they were so designated.

Not completely true. Recent example is Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah. Hugely disputed area declared a national monument by Clinton on his way out, as I recall. If no one really wants to use the land, there's not much of a point to declaring it a national park/monument.

By the way, Grand Staircase would be a national park in any other state.

[il Padrino Ute]

Originally Posted by ERCougar

Not completely true. Recent example is Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah. Hugely disputed area declared a national monument by Clinton on his way out, as I recall. If no one really wants to use the land, there's not much of a point to declaring it a national park/monument.

By the way, Grand Staircase would be a national park in any other state.

Clinton wasn't on the way out. He made the illegal declaration that it was to be a National Monument in '96 in order to rally the fringe environmentalists to push him over the top to re-election. And the coward did it from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon because he was too big of a pussy to set foot in Utah.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Originally Posted by ERCougar

The Subway's a great hike, but if you haven't done it yet, you need to make it to Mystery Canyon. Permit/Lottery system like the Subway. There are 10+ rappels through the hike with the last one being a 100-footer down a waterfall into the Narrows. You hike the last mile or two of the Narrows to finish the hike. You can easily do it in a day. Really cool and more accessible than a lot of the other slots (and therefore really popular...).

I just wish they'd build a museum at the end.

Thanks. We have thought about doing that one. It looks fabulous. I wonder how my kids would handle a 100' rappel, but they are probably up for it now.

Have you ever done Orderville Canyon?

Don't take SU's condescension regarding national parks too seriously. His family owns a swank lodge/resort at Zion.

[ERCougar]

Originally Posted by Jeff Lebowski

Thanks. We have thought about doing that one. It looks fabulous. I wonder how my kids would handle a 100' rappel, but they are probably up for it now.

Have you ever done Orderville Canyon?

Don't take SU's condescension regarding national parks too seriously. His family owns a swank lodge/resort at Zion.

We just moved here a year ago, and we have three kids under 7, so I haven't made it to Orderville yet. Looks cool though.

Like SU, I love the Pacific Northwest--it's amazing. And Yosemite's pretty cool too, if it weren't for all the people. But I just don't think there's anything to compare to southwestern Utah. I grew up in SLC and probably hiked every peak on the Wasatch Front, with the occasional foray down to southern Utah, but I had no idea just how much there is down here until living here.

[TripletDaddy]

Originally Posted by ERCougar

We just moved here a year ago, and we have three kids under 7, so I haven't made it to Orderville yet. Looks cool though.

Like SU, I love the Pacific Northwest--it's amazing. And Yosemite's pretty cool too, if it weren't for all the people. But I just don't think there's anything to compare to southwestern Utah. I grew up in SLC and probably hiked every peak on the Wasatch Front, with the occasional foray down to southern Utah, but I had no idea just how much there is down here until living here.

It is hard to compare to so much barren dirt.