- All right, you guys ready?

- Ready.

- Utah is home to five of the nation's top national parks, also known as, The Mighty Five.

Pretty incredible stuff.

For this adventure, we're hitting two of our favorites on a red rock road trip through the heart of Utah's epic desert landscapes.

Our first stop is below the massive walls of Zion National Park.

We'll pull over, get out, take a little hike, find a little slot canyon.

Then it's tunnel time on Utah route 9 to another hike into Zion's less crowded back country, before heading to Bryce Canyon National Park on Utah's amazing scenic route 12.

We're not even in the park yet, and all the shots you wanna stop and grab are just beautiful.

Bryce Canyon's famous hoodoo formations are the big draw here, but shooting sunrise over Bryce is a bucket list dream come true.

It's 16 degrees outside.

This says 19 degrees.

What's our elevation?

- 8100.

8100 feet?

Combined into one adventure, Zion and Bryce Canyon packed plenty of front country punch, but a exploring off the beaten path here, unlocks the unique scenic finds you'll never forget.

And really the trick is to just listen, which is hard to do right now 'cause I'm out of breath from climbing up out of the creek bed.

Get ready for two photogenic national parks explored on one drive through a land of sandstone, blue sky, and snow covered sage.

We've got a little lens envy going on.

- Half your lens is a hood.

(both laughing) (Jeff shushing) (lively upbeat music) - [Narrator 1] When you travel, the world becomes a smaller place.

(air whooshing) When you explore with friends that share a love of photography, (air whooshing) destinations come to life.

- Are you not entertained?

(air whooshing) - [Narrator 1] We tell the stories of travel with our cameras, capturing images of the most beautiful places on earth.

But every adventure reveals more than what's found in the frame.

(air whooshing) The people, the food, (glasses clinking) and the unexpected terms that happen on every journey.

- Should I let him go?

- No, he's going downtown on you.

Hang on a second.

- [Narrator 1] Brings the full experience of travel into focus.

(lively upbeat music) - [Narrator 2] Production funding for "Outside Beyond the Lens", provided by Visit Fresno County.

Nature, diversity, found in the heart of California central valley.

From Fresno and Clovis, you can drive to three nearby national parks.

By Hedrick's Chevrolet.

- Hedrick Chevrolet is proud to support the spirit of travel in each of us.

Every journey has a first step.

Adventures start here.

- [Narrator 2] By Advance Beverage Company, serving Bakersfield and Kern County for over 50 years.

From our family to yours, supporting Valley PBS and the Wonders of Travel.

By The Penstar Group.

Promoting growth and opportunity in business through collaboration and partnerships for the future.

By Hodges Electric.

Serving California Central Valley since 1979, dedicated to supporting public television and the calling in all of us to explore.

And by Visit Yosemite Madera County, California's gateway to Yosemite National Park.

Explore the outdoor magic of Madera County and be inspired to discover more.

(gentle guitar music) - Utah is a place of great landscapes and scenic diversity.

The rugged mountains in the Northern part of the state seem to change without a hint of blending transformation into the slick rock regions of Southern Utah, where the state's five national parks are all found.

These parks, known as, The Mighty Five, include Zion, Bryce, Capital Reef, Canyon Lands and Arches National Parks, and all can be visited by a network of highways and routes that make getting to these national treasures almost as memorable as the parks themselves.

(gentle guitar music) Once again, we're in road trip mode, which for the purposes of shooting a TV series about photography, and the beauty of places like America's national parks, is a very efficient way to cover a lot of ground, to capture multiple destinations in a short amount of time.

We've set aside seven days to explore three of Utah's national parks, that will be broken up into two separate episodes.

First up, the Sandstone Cliffs and cathedral-like appeal of Zion National Park.

All right, so we're pulled over in the little town of Hurricane, Utah, which is just east of St. George off the 15.

And we're just kind of in the parking lot here at the Rooster Run Cafe, and before we get into the park, we just wanna build up the cameras, get the microphones going, make sure everything's working right, and then that way we can just, you know, kind of pull off the road and start grabbing stuff as we're coming in.

The drive into Zion is really pretty.

If you've been to Yosemite before, it's kind of got that same grandeur to it as you approach it through the little town that's just outside, is it Springdale?

- [David] Springdale.

- Yeah, Springdale, it's just outside of the park, so we'll get everything ready to go, that way when we start driving we're in it to win it.

(gentle guitar music) As we approach Zion National Park, the scenery begins to warm up for the main attraction just up the road.

The Virgin river, that carves through the heart of Zion just ahead, has a less dramatic effect on the landscape here.

Gently winding through private property and agricultural spans of Southern Utah.

Pretty incredible stuff.

- [David] Yeah.

- It's pretty much like the best day ever on this shoot so far.

We just started we're not even there yet.

But we've got crystal clear blue skies and whenever you get, the storm went through here about a week ago, about four or five days ago, and I knew watching the weather when it was going through here, we were gonna have this kind of stuff.

When that snows on those rocks, it's just magic.

(car engine revving) (gentle guitar music continues) (gentle somber music) Springdale is the closest town to Zion National Park.

A quiet place in winter months, booming in the summer vacation season.

And as we pass through the quaint confines of Zion's doorsteps, the impact of this very special place on earth cast its spell on three more souls.

(gentle somber music continues) Zion became a national park in 1919, and of its 229 square miles is best known for Zion Canyon.

Carved by North Fork of The Virgin river, The Canyon's framed by red and tan Navajo sandstone cliffs, some over 2000 feet tall.

I've been to Zion several times, and it's beauty never wanes.

It's a park that is gut punch gorgeous.

A place so perfect, a part of me immediately feels a kind of pain inside once I get here, knowing that soon I will once again have to leave it behind.

- I'd take everything including the kitchen sink with me.

- [Jeff] (laughs loudly) You are taking everything but this kitchen sink, I like it.

- It looks good.

- [Zack] All right Jeff, you good?

- [Jeff] I'm good, you guys go ahead, I'll catch up.

Have fun.

- We fan out, you wanna come back, what, half hour?

- [Jeff] Yeah, yeah, 20 minutes, half hour.

(gentle somber music) Unfortunately for us on this trip, our pace is fast.

This is literally a drive through shoot for us, with the plan to still get to Bryce Canyon National Park, two hours away, by tonight.

On the scenic loop drive deeper into Zion Canyon, we passed the most popular feature in the park, a rock formation called Angels Landing.

The 2.5 mile long trail gains 1500 feet in elevation from the Virgin river to the top of the landing.

The trail itself is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and is a popular bucket list height for many.

The final half mile of the hike is where people either turn around, or push on the top, carefully climbing a knife edge trail with nothing but steady nerves and a chain handrail to guide them to the summit.

From below looking up, hikers can be seen making the last daring climb on Zion's star attraction.

And for those who touch the summit, stunning views of Zion Canyon stretch out in every direction.

Look at this day.

Look at this.

Absolutely perfect day.

Blue skies, no clouds, temps are not brutally cold, and walking up, I see Zach Allen right now.

He's just finished a nice session I'm sure.

Yeah, that's your first time here, so how are you digging it?

- I'm loving this.

This isn't what I expected but, you know, it's better once you're here, it's for sure.

- Yeah, we're not even into the park yet, that's the crazy thing.

(Zack laughs loudly) That's what's crazy is we're just... We just started the scenic drive, the scenic loop drive, right?

So this is usually closed during the summertime because there's too many people that come in here, so they shuttle you in on this part.

But one of the benefits coming here in the winter time, is that typically it's open so you can drive your own car in, and that gives you the chance to drop out wherever you want.

- We can go at our own pace.

- And go at your own pace.

- Yeah, this is great.

- It is great.

(gentle guitar music) The scenic loop drive comes to an end at a place called the Temple of Sinawava, and it's where the famed Riverwalk and Zion begins.

This trail leads up the Virgin river to another popular place to explore in the park called The Narrows.

Here, visitors navigate the Virgin river on foot, armed with wet suit and special boots rented from various outfitters in Springdale.

Okay, I've stopped just here off of the scenic loop driving Zion, and right behind me, there's a family of deer, sitting down, bedded down right now, in the cottonwoods, and I got some pretty good shots.

I've got the big lens on, I've got the 600, 200 to 600-millimeter lens on right here.

And so I'm getting a pretty good shot of the little baby, little dove, little fawn in there.

Kinda see them sitting right in here, right in here.

And there's a lot of deer in here, I've been here several times.

There's some great deer spotting in here, so you can see some great deer, some big bucks in too in here.

And really pretty to sit here, under these red rock cliffs, little bit of traffic going by that's okay.

It's a nice, beautiful afternoon.

After splitting up for a while, to grab different scenes from the river walk trail area.

I pick up Zach and Dave at the park parking lot, to move this train down the tracks.

- We had a great time.

- [Jeff] Did it work, did you guys stick together?

- We stuck together, yeah.

- Zion is really a place that needs at least two or three days, to do properly when planning a visit here.

Since this is more of a pass-through experience for us, it's back to Utah Route 9, and up the switchbacks, that climb towards Zion's backcountry beauty.

(car engine roaring) We're on this cool little climb out, on Highway 9 up to 89.

So you kind of climb out, you can see back there is where we were, back down in Zion National Park, in the main Canyon, and the Virgin River.

Now, we're climbing up this really cool switchback road, from way down below, kind of comes up, switches back around behind me, and keeps ongoing.

And then it's gonna go into a tunnel, which goes through this whole rock right here.

You can see a little window that's in the tunnel, right there.

That's a little vent and the tunnel's inside, it keeps on going all the way back through, and then we're gonna punch out on the other side.

Utah Route 9, also known as Zion Park Scenic Byway, leads us to the Zion-Mount Carmel Tunnel.

A mile-long bore through petrified sand, that at its time of completion in 1930, was the longest non-urban tunnel in the United States.

And the light at the end of this tunnel illuminates a paradise of desert landscapes, caught between seasons, and the beauty that struggle leaves behind.

(gentle somber music) What I truly love about this part of Southern Utah, is that you don't have to be in a designated park, or weave through crowded trailheads, to have a memorable experience here.

The only admission fee is a curious mind, and explore spirit and a love for natural settings, that sometimes are tough to explain in words.

After linking up with Highway 89, at Mount Carmel junction, we head north towards Bryce Canyon National Park.

Chasing light across the desert, hopeful for a few more shots to bag before darkness, and below-freezing temps creep back in.

Another hour up the road, we turn east on one of America's best scenic drives, the legendary Utah Route 12, Scenic Byway.

Snow still blankets the wide-open fields of Prairie Sage and grasslands, on a late winter afternoon, that is slipping in tonight.

(gentle somber music continues) Just before the sunset, the geology that gives Bryce Canyon National Park, its juice, 15 miles further up the road, gives us a sneak peek of what's to come.

The singularly unique formations here called hoodoos, stand like a forest of rock.

Formed millions of years ago, as inland seas in freshwater floods deposit, of massive amounts of fine-grain sediment.

That then became stone, only to be forced back into the elements through tectonic upheaval, and slowly sculpted by times hands of weathering and erosion.

Okay, so it's 6:15 in the morning, it's 16 degrees outside.

This is 19 degrees in the car, 16 that I do the thing.

And we're gonna go shoot sunrise.

So that's what you do when you're in Bryce Canyon National Park.

You shoot the sunrise when it comes up over the hill to the east.

Lots of folks are up, and at them, we've seen lots of people up, you know, coming with their backpacks, and their camera equipment, everybody's heading out right now.

There's pretty much, all the spots are good.

I think Dave, the last time we were here, we shot inspiration point.

- Yeah, I believe so.

- And not sunrise point where I think a lot of people go, so we're gonna head there now, and see what it looks like.

Bryce Canyon National Park, which despite its name, is not actually a Canyon, was named after for Mormon pioneer Ebenezer Bryce, that homesteaded here in 1874.

Bryce is much smaller, and at higher elevation than Zion National Park.

You're okay?

- Yeah.

- Made up of amphitheaters of red rock hoodoos, park visitors typically look down at, from the park's main road above.

Okay, so what we're doing here is, we're trying to figure out exactly where the sun's coming up.

So we've got these programs that show us where the sun comes up, these apps.

And so you say it's gonna come up over here, just a little bit more Zach, right?

The thing we're trying to make sure, we're at inspiration point, and the terrain sort of wraps around the corner here, we make sure that we're not blocked by the actual sunrise.

What's our elevation?

- 8,100 right.

- [Jeff] 8,100 feet.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, well that wind coming up Canyon though, woo.

Now there's actual inspiration point off to your right, up the hill.

We can see the hoodoos starting to light up, in the early morning light.

(gentle inspiration music) If we look down, down to the city of Tropic, little town of Tropic down below, you might be able to see the lights, but man, it's gonna be beautiful.

Let's go get our gear.

Getting up to shoot sunrise, means you're actually up well before sunrise, to get everything ready.

Once I'm here in the moment, there's always a great sense of excitement.

That chance that maybe, this will be the one sunrise I'll always remember.

As we stand here, in the subfreezing wind of a bitter cold Utah morning, waiting for the day's opening act, it feels like I remember them all.

Okay, we are here at inspiration point in Bryce Canyon National Park, right before sunrise, as you can see, it's starting to come together, back there behind me.

And ooh, literally looking good over there.

It's cold right now, it's the low teens, and the wind is blowing straight up the Canyon behind me, right in my face when I turn around.

But the guys are set up.

Zach and Dave have good positions set up.

We're all kind of shooting different programs right now.

Zach's got a tight lapse going, and some wide-angle stuff.

They shooting some wide.

I've got the big lens on, to try to actually grab the sunrise itself coming up.

The sun's arrival transforms the muted pastels of Bryce Canyons slowly.

The higher its angle in the sky, the more intense the colors found here, reflect that light, and the desert begins to glow from within.

Bryce Canyon has many places along its rim, to take in different views of the hoodoos formations below.

But there's nothing like actually getting down into them.

An excellent system of trails winds through these towers of rock, that give you an entirely new perspective and appreciation of their size.

All right, man, you can see, when you get down below the rim, we're on the Queens Garden Trail.

When you get down in here, and you're amongst these hoodoos, it's really cool, all right D, it's been a while since you have been down on this whole trail.

- It's been a few years, yeah.

(Jeff laughs loudly) Yeah, it feels good to be back here.

- [Jeff] It does, same conditions too when we were here last time, we filmed here back in like 2011, I think it was... - [David] Yeah, there a lot of snow on the trail there.

- [Jeff] Yeah, it was January and pretty cool.

There's a lot of people, lots of folks out walking, enjoying the trail like we are today, out here.

Yeah, beautiful sunny day, (indistinct) it is fun The rim views of Bryce Canyon are spectacular, and I recommend stopping at each of them or better yet, do a nice hike along the rim trail, to really take this place in.

But even if you're short on time, or not sure if your physical conditioning, to venture off the overlooks above, try your best to take a short walk down into this surreal landscape to see up close, how the forces of nature and time, have created another masterpiece.

So how, is this your first time to Bryce?

- It's my absolutely first time.

- [Jeff] And what's it like out here for you?

- It is amazing.

The sunrises and the sunsets that I've seen so far, have just been spectacular.

And just, I'm going down to the hoodoos right now, to see what they are, and it's just very impressive.

I'm not a professional like you, I'm doing it the... - [Jeff] Well, that's what this shows about.

We inspire people to do it with... - (indistinct) I got my little two X zoom that I clip on, and so I go back and forth, and then I'll clean them up at home with digital zoom.

And I pick out the nice spots for people to see, I'll post them.

(gentle upbeat music) - We've got little lens envy going on.

- Half your lens is a hood.

(both laugh loudly) - [Jeff] Back above Bryce Canyon National Park now, we visit the most grand of the rim level views at Bryce point.

This platform extends well off the wall of the canyon, for stunning drop-away views, in almost 360 degrees.

The trick here, after grabbing all the obvious shots, is to really pay attention to the detail, of what is found far below.

The main stops for services just outside the park boundaries in Bryce, are home to several hotels, the Shuttle Service, and the historic Ruby's Inn.

And is where we stop for a quick bite to eat lunch, on another run and gun day.

Picking up a little lunch.

- Right?

- [Jeff] A lot of lunch, Zach.

So, and Zach, we're at a local sandwich purveyor.

- [Zack] It's pretty much (indistinct).

- [Jeff] We've all kind of spread out how to Zach, Zach, Dave drinking of some water.

Zach, did you hit your three cookies already?

(indistinct) - [Jeff] He's got three cookies.

- I got one for each of us.

- Well, no you don't, those are three for you I know.

I know that's how this rolls.

I got a salad going here, but no dressing on it, which has been slowing me down a little bit.

(gentle somber music continues) Our last run of the day, is to a place away from the main canyon area, down Utah Route 12, to a Trailhead of one of Bryce Canyon's mini hidden gyms, free from crabs.

Okay, so we're parked at Mossy Cave turnout.

This is just like, I'd say like four or five miles below Bryce.

I have to turn off from Bryce Canyon.

So we're just gonna cruise on in here.

It's about a half a mile hike into the cave, and along the way, there's some really pretty hoodoos with some windows in them, and a cool little creek running through.

So we're gonna go check it out.

The short hike into Mossy Cave along the trail that crosses a Creek called Tropic Ditch, is a fun way to wind down the day.

(gentle instrumental music) This scenic walk, leads us below another impressive display of hoodoos spires, beginning to catch the late sun's vibrant rays, casting long shadows across a frozen landscape.

In winter months, Tropic Ditch Falls freezes completely, giving us easy access to admire a rare site, that so sharply contrasts the desert scape surrounding it.

(gentle upbeat music) A little further up the trail, and one short steep little pull up a frozen path, leads to another icy treasure in Bryce Canyon backcountry, to Mossy Cave.

The last time I was here, this was a fully frozen giant waterfall, hanging over the edge, and it's not there today.

Lack of water in this little Creek who knows, but still, really pretty Mossy Cave is.

And really the trick is to just listen, which is hard to do right now.

Cause I'm out of breath from climbing up outta the Creek bed, but let's get some shots in here, this is really cool.

This shelter cave becomes a frozen grotto in winter months, and a cool retreat from the heat, lined with moss and lichen in summer.

The desert Southwest, and the roads that wind through these rugged, but approachable landscapes, are not only fun to explore.

(gentle somber music) They inspire a natural curiosity, to see what's next.

The wide-open of Utah's Southern Parklands, feed a wandering soul and awaken a create of beat, in the hearts of those that have forgotten, or have not yet discovered, what travel through places like this, can do for a person mired in the grind.

We tell the stories of travel with our cameras, and as Utah Route 12, pulls us deeper to the east, on a journey only halfway complete.

News stories of places yet to see are waiting to be told.

(gentle inspirational music) - [Narrator 2] Production funding for Outside Beyond the Lens, provided by Visit Fresno County.

Nature, diversity found in the heart of California Central Valley.

From Fresno and Clovis, you can drive to three nearby national parks, by Hedricks Chevrolet.

- Hedrick Chevrolet, is proud to support the spirit of travel in each of us.

Every journey has a first step, adventures start here.

- [Narrator 2] By advanced beverage company, serving Bakersfield and Kern County, for over 50 years, from our family to yours.

Supporting Valley PBS and the Wonders of Travel.

By the Penstar Group, promoting growth and opportunity in business, through collaboration and partnerships, for the future.

By Hodges Electric, serving California Central Valley since 1979, dedicated to supporting public television, and the calling in all of us to explore.

And by visit Yosemite Madera County, California's gateway to Yosemite National Park.

Explore the outdoor magic of Madera County, and be inspired to discover more.

(lively upbeat music)