For the previous post in this series, check out Day 6: Zion National Park. In this post, we drive back to Salt Lake City to wrap up our week-long Utah Mighty Five trip.
DAY 7: RETURN TO SALT LAKE CITY
Well, all things must eventually come to an end, and we have arrived on the last day of week in the Beehive State. We enjoyed every minute of our time in the five Utah National Parks (Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon and Zion), plus a Utah National Monument (Natural Bridges) and Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado. If you planned your trip based on our itinerary, you will be beginning the 4.5 hour drive back to Salt Lake City for the last day.
You could choose to keep the adventure going and end your trip in Las Vegas. It is less than 3 hours away from Zion National Park. However, our flights were out of SLC. And of course, it is more expensive to return a rental car to a different location than the pickup site. So after our free hotel breakfast, we hit the road back to the state capital.
The funniest memory we have of this day is thinking the scenery during our drive was boring. Of course, that was nowhere near the truth. It just wasn’t as exciting when compared to the scenic roads, national parks and rock formations we saw earlier in the week. Of course, we regretted feeling this way months later when we were driving down the interstate through the flat farm fields of Illinois…
LUNCH & CRAFT BEER
You’ll have plenty of restaurant options along this stretch of I-15. Sometimes we like to try fast food restaurants that aren’t available near our home. And that’s exactly what we did and stopped at a Del Taco for lunch. We thought it was alright, but when ranking Americanized Mexican fast food, Taco Bell still reigns supreme for us.
We got back to Salt Lake City a little early since we wanted to make sure we could return our rental car on time. So we decided to check out Uinta Brewing before dropping off our car. At the time of writing, you have to be 21 and over to enter. So unfortunately, this is not an option if you have kids. However, if you’re on an adults-only trip, they have a nice brewhouse pub with a long line of craft beers on tap, plus a full food menu. There was actually a painting class going on when we visited, adding to the nice social atmosphere of the brewery.
DINNER & LODGING IN SALT LAKE CITY
After returning our car to Enterprise, they drove us back to the Hilton Garden Inn by the SLC airport, which is where we began our journey a week ago. There are a plethora of dining options across different cuisines and price ranges nearby. But we were pretty exhausted and weren’t looking for a fancy dinner or anything. Since we had been driving a good chunk of the day, we were happy to walk over to a Perkins Restaurant & Bakery that was less than a mile away. It’s a quick and easy walk through mostly hotels and a corporate park. With a wide variety on the menu, everyone will be able to find something to enjoy here.
THAT'S ALL, FOLKS!
And there you have it! The next morning, we rode the free hotel shuttle to the airport to fly back home. Our plane actually got delayed a few hours because a bird had hit the plane (never had that happen before!) But Southwest provided great customer service as usual. In fact, they provided every passenger a $100 voucher for future flights, which we used for our long weekend trip to Austin, Texas.
Thanks for reading along with us! If you want to take one of the best week-long road trips of your life, we hope we inspired you to consider doing it in Utah. We realize not every family is the same. So even if you don’t do your trip exactly like ours (and you probably shouldn’t), our “Utah in a Week” series should give you a good foundation to plan your trip.
Have you been to Utah? Let us know what your favorite parts were in the comments below! To view other posts in our “Utah in a Week” series, click a link below: