One Day in Canyonlands National Park

During our bucket list trip to Utah to hike the Mighty 5, we spent one day in Canyonlands National Park. This was one of the parks (along with Capitol Reef) that I didn’t know much about. You don’t hear it talked about as often as Arches or Zion, for example, and I noticed when doing my trip planning that some people even skip it. However, I was a bit like Slughorn in Harry Potter. I wanted the whole set. There was no way we were skipping Canyonlands!

While all the parks offer so much to do you could spend more than just one day, that’s how our itinerary worked out. One day in Canyonlands seems to be what most people do. Here is my complete play-by-play of our time there. I hope it helps you plan an epic day of your own 🙂

Getting There

We were doing the Mighty 5 clockwise and woke up bright and early in Moab, Utah, where we had spent the previous day hiking in Arches National Park. We skipped sunset at Delicate Arch because it was a late May sunset, and we knew we needed to leave Moab super early the next day to catch sunrise in Canyonlands. We left Moab at 4:30 a.m. and drove the hour and a half to Canyonlands to be there by 6 a.m.

Where to Stay

We left Moab early on this day and ended it in Torrey, Utah. Canyonlands was essentially an all day road trip stop. Torrey is almost 3 hours away from Canyonlands, so there’s a decent amount of driving on this day. An hour and a half to Canyonlands from Moab then three from Canyonlands to Torrey. But staying in Torrey made the most sense as we were doing Capitol Reef National Park the following day.

When we finally made it to Torrey, we checked into the Broken Spur Inn and Steakhouse. I loved that it had laundry and a restaurant on site. Our first night here we actually drove a bit more to go out to dinner at Chak Balam Mexican Restaurant. Really great food!

Chak Balam Mexican Restaurant in Torrey, UT

One Day in Canyonlands: Our Itinerary

Here’s everything we were able to do in our one day in Canyonlands…P.S. this is all in the Island in the Sky District of the park.

sunrise at Mesa Arch
Aztec Butte
White Rim Trail
Shafer Canyon Overlook
Green River Overlook
Grand View Point

We started our day with a 15 minute “hike” from the parking lot to Mesa Arch around 6 a.m. to see it light up for sunrise. I’m really glad we made the effort to get there in time. The early morning was sooooo worth it! Seeing the colors change and just the view in general was absolutely stunning. I will say, as someone scared of heights, Mesa Arch was quite scary. I loved seeing it, but I was very happy to leave that cliffside drop off about an hour later.

Next we stopped off at a couple viewpoints to see Shafer Canyon Overlook and Green River Overlook. Then it was on to our first of two actual hikes in Canyonlands. I didn’t know if we’d get to Aztec Butte this day, but we pulled into the parking lot as we were driving by to check it out. It looked like it would take about an hour and seemed fun. I’m so glad we did this because it ended up being one of my favorite hikes of our whole Utah trip.

Aztec Butte ended up taking us an hour and 20 minutes, but we took our time and stopped for lots of pictures. It looks like a huge rock from far away, and I wasn’t sure what to expect, but you do scale this rock and climb to the top. Once you find your way up there (which was so fun and not scary at all even though I hate heights), you get amazing views of the surrounding nature. And there are also 900 year old granaries to explore. Absolutely incredible.

Our second and final hike in Canyonlands was the White Rim Trail which took us an hour. It was an easy, flat hike with some great views. Then we had a scenic picnic lunch before saying goodbye to this park!