Top 10 Utah sites

Some fan of Utah (the state) asked Bettie to ask me to tell her Utah's 10 best spots. So I made one up.

Now, while you're looking at this, keep in mind that I think Snowbird and Lake Powell and the Uintas and Delicate Arch and Dead Horse Point are fabulous. These might not be the most beautiful spots in the whole state. They're just spots that I was stoked! to find. They're listed in the order that they popped into my head.

If you've been to any of these, tell me.

1. Drive the LaSal Mountain Loop Road, from Fisher Towers (11 miles east of Moab along the Colorado River) area up into the LaSal mountains and back down to the highway just south of Moab. Starts in red rock towers, climbs to the shadow of a couple of 12,000-foot peaks and descends to some sweet views of Canyonlands.

2. Cassidy Arch, 1.75-mile hike in Capitol Reef National Park. You can walk right on top of this huge arch, and it's a little spooky.

3. Egypt 3, a short slot canyon (not technical) off the Hole in the Rock Road just east of Escalante (in Grand Staircase). Lots of variety -- narrow section; twisty, plunging section; deep section.

4. Cable Arch, aka Funnel Arch, a fun little hike off the Kane Creek Road near Moab. It's not on any of the regular hiking maps. Take the Kane Creek Road (it starts between McDonald's and Burger King) west from Moab. There's a rock full of petroglyphs on the right (a sign points you to it from the road), then the road bends to the left and there's a pullout on the left. Stop there. Hike up the wash, scramble up to the top and bear right. You'll find it eventually from there. Nice arch, named for a cable attached to a nearby fin. Good luck.

5. Hovenweep, for nice clifftop dwellings that you can walk right up to. When I was a kid, there were no signs saying, "Please keep your distance" or whatever. But now the signs are like 2 feet from the walls, so it's still great.

6. Pine Creek Canyon in Zion, if you're up for a technical slot canyon with several nice, kinda scary rappels.

7. Swazys Leap, San Rafael Swell. Get a good map and take I-70 to Exit 131 west of Green River. This would be a fun little mountain bike (if you're into that sort of thing) to the Little Black Box section of the San Rafael River. I walked it. Cool local legend -- Sid Swasey won a bet by leaping over this very rugged, pretty wide gap over a 100-foot or so drop on a horse. You can actually cross the river near there, so you can wade the river or climb up and look down from the leap.

8. Thistle Slide Overlook. Just a really cool geologic event that happened in my lifetime. HUGE natural mudslide wiped out a little town in 1983. You can almost see it happen from this overlook. On US 6/89 just north of where 6 and 89 join (about 15 miles southeast of Spanish Fork).

9. Burr Trail East of Boulder, west of Capitol Reef. Everything's great in there. And I'm not going to tell you what. OK, I'll give you one spot. It's awesome. Strike Valley Overlook. It's actually after the road crosses into Capitol Reef National Park. Short hike to a gigantic, I don't know, amphitheater, half a conk shell standing on its end.

10. Meadow Hot Springs Just off I-15, central Utah, exit 158 at the town of Meadow, 4 miles south of Fillmore. Drive 2 miles south, turn west drive OVER the freeway on a gravel road (never seen that before) follow that to this very deep hot springs. (It gets pretty hick-wild on Saturday nights, though.)