Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and Texas, United States
Red rock, slot canyons, and high desert: the national parks of the American Southwest, from the Grand Canyon and Zion to the white gypsum dunes of New Mexico. Built for cooler-season travel.
Quick facts
Start this quest to track your progress and log each stop as you go.
Bag them in any order. Each one you log brings the park count up.
This collection brings together the national parks of the desert Southwest across Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and west Texas. It includes the canyon country of the Colorado Plateau, the dunes of White Sands, and the caves of Carlsbad and Guadalupe.
The Southwest parks are clustered tightly enough to chain together, especially the Utah parks, and they share a season. Summer heat makes many of them punishing, so a grouping that signals spring, fall, and winter as the right windows is genuinely useful for planning.
It is for travelers who want a canyon-and-desert focused project, and for anyone planning the classic Utah loop and wanting to extend it into Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.
The best season for Desert Southwest National Parks is Spring, Fall, Winter.
Desert Southwest National Parks has 12 checkpoints to log on the way to finishing it.
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