6 Days In Monticello, UT: Here’s What We Did

My parents flew over from the UK to join us on our road trip from early April to early May. After spending 10 days in Phoenix, AZ and Albuquerque, NM, the next couple of weeks we visited Utah.

The first six of those days were spent in Monticello, a small town about an hour south of Moab. Here’s a roundup of everything that we got up to in that time.

Where We Stayed

Although we would’ve preferred to stay in Moab as it’s much closer to the National Parks and State Park that we wanted to visit, hotel and Airbnb prices were very high during the dates we wanted to visit as many were ~$300 per night. As a result, we decided to trade proximity for price and booked this Airbnb in Monticello.

That meant that rather than paying $300 per night, we paid $117.11 per night, thereby saving almost $200 per night or well over $1,000 between us for the entire stay. Those savings were worth it, especially because it was a lovely two bedroom property with a nice kitchen, a washer and dryer and it was within walking distance of a grocery store.

What We Did

Canyonlands National Park

The day after we arrived in Monticello, we all visited Canyonlands National Park. Carved by the Colorado River and Green River, the canyon views are stunning, made even better by the La Sal Mountains serving as a backdrop. Check out this post for more about Canyonlands and why I liked it even more than Grand Canyon National Park.

Arches National Park

The other National Park that’s near Moab is Arches National Park. With more than 2,000 arches in the park, we only had time to see a small fraction of them. We did hike up to Delicate Arch though, plus saw several other interesting arches.

Dead Horse Point State Park

On the north-east corner of Canyonlands National Park is a small (by comparison to Canyonlands) state park called Dead Horse Point State Park. We’d had some people highly recommend it and it wasn’t hard to see why. It has similar beautiful views as Canyonlands, but has the added benefit of being pet-friendly and so Truffles was able to join us on a hike there.

See this post for more about our visit to Dead Horse Point State Park.

Easter Fun

The way we did Easter growing up in the UK was different to how Shae did it growing up in the US, so we introduced my parents to an alternative way. Shae took my parents early in the morning to a (chilly) sunrise Easter service.

Later that morning we organized an Easter egg hunt around the Airbnb.

They got to hunt for their first Easter baskets too, so then we all opened ours.

Truffles wasn’t left out of the fun either. She got to hunt for Easter eggs filled with treats and even willingly posed as the Easter bunny!

Stargazing

We wanted to take my parents stargazing while in Monticello as we were hopeful that the sky would be dark enough to see the Milky Way. We headed out to Needles Overlook which is part of Canyonlands National Park as it seemed like it’d be far enough from light pollution to have it be dark.

On the one hand, we were successful – Needles Overlook was indeed very dark. Unfortunately it was fairly cloudy that night which meant the night sky wasn’t as clear as we’d been hoping for. Still, it was a fun (but very chilly and windy) late night adventure.

Where We Ate & Drank

Spitfire Smokehouse BBQ & Taps

After going hiking at Dead Horse Point State Park, we were ready for dinner. Our drive back to Monticello took us through Moab, so we decided to stop there for something to eat.

We ended up at Spitfire Smokehouse BBQ & Taps which was a great choice as they had tasty BBQ and incredibly quick service – our food was at our table within a couple of minutes of ordering.

Granary Bar & Grill

Our Airbnb had a booklet about things to do in and around Monticello. One of the local restaurants and bars it listed was Granary Bar & Grill, so we went there for snacks and drinks before continuing on to Needles Overlook to try stargazing.

It was a great bar with lots of fun cocktails and shots and good snack food – they serve meals too, but we only got appetizers as we’d had dinner earlier that evening. I even got to see my mom doing a shot for the first time! Well, I don’t know if it was her first time doing a shot, but it was my first time seeing her do one!

Monticello, UT was a cute place to stay. Our next destination was Kanab, UT, but it was a bit of a drive and we wanted to visit Capitol Reef National Park along the way. I also had to work the day we moved on from Monticello, so we booked an overnight stop in Green River, UT along the way before continuing on to Capitol Reef the day after.