Cathedral Gorge State Park

Southwestern Trip 2022 | Hiking in Cathedral Gorge State Park | October 2022

We woke up in Utah on this Monday morning with one big item on the agenda: We needed to cross into Nevada and get Charlotte her 48th state! Yes, of course she cares about this – don’t you? How many dogs out there can say they’ve been to 48 states? (Since we already have the hardest one – Hawaii – out of the way, we might as well shoot for 50, right?)

We drove from Enterprise Reservoir back up to UT-219 and headed West. When the highway crossed into Nevada, it turned to dirt BLM roads, but it was well maintained enough to get us up to NV-319. Then we went North on US-93 and to our first stop of the day: Cathedral Gorge State Park.

When planning this trip, we knew we needed to hit Nevada. The only things we’ve done here before were visit Hoover Dam, Lake Meade, and Valley of Fire State Park. That was back during our Spring Break vacation in 2014, before I was really into hiking. Revisiting Valley of Fire and actually hiking sounded really fun, but I also happened to have another state park starred on Google maps, and I couldn’t remember why. Since that park was in a new county and further away from Las Vegas/St. George, we decided to head North instead of South before beginning our long drive back to the Midwest.

The highway leading up to the park gave very little away as to what to expect, but as soon as we entered the park, I quickly remembered why I had starred it. The park is in a narrow valley and filled with stunning views of unique rock formations caused by erosion very similar to Badlands. But in some areas, the erosion had created natural grottos and caves among the spires.

There are trails going all through the park and even right up, into, and through the spires and the grottos. We were blown away, and since we basically had the whole park to ourselves and the morning was still cool, we decided to hike as much as we could!

We started out by walking up and into the cathedral formations. Well, we tried to all go together, but Charlotte was too scared to go into the narrow caves so Curtis and I took turns. Then we began on the Juniper Draw Loop Trail. This trail makes a 3 mile loop along to the North end of the park and back, essentially letting us see as much of the park as possible by foot. And as if that wasn’t enough, we decided to add on the spur trail up to Miller’s Point for an overlook. We found out at the top that there’s also a parking lot here so you can drive directly to this spot from the highway…but that’s okay, it was still fun to walk up the stairs and admire the clay formations from all angles!

Having an early start helped us avoid the heat of the day, but we still stopped halfway through to give Charlotte a little break and to check out another slot canyon. We admired how smooth the sand felt, the texture of the clay, and marveled at how it all abruptly stopped at the ground level. This was such an enjoyable walk, and we were so glad we made the decision to come here!

After we returned to the parking lot, we took another long rest in the shade. We noticed there were showers at the campground, and decide to “treat ourselves” to a 25 cent shower. It had already been a week of camping and living on the road, after all!

With the day almost half done, we said goodbye to this state park and resumed driving North on US-93, heading to Great Basin National Park. All about our time in that park coming up in our next post!