The dusty and dramatic eastern Utah landscapes around Moab used to portray HBOʼs futuristic theme park in Westworld have appeared on both the big and small screen dozens of times before. The desert scenes in Thelma & Louise, while pretending to be the rather flat ‘New Mexico’, are the spectacular sandstone landscapes of the La Sal Mountains, Route 46, southeast of Moab in eastern Utah; Arches National Park, to the north of Moab and Canyonlands National Park to the southwest. The spectacular gorge of the final scene is not the ‘Grand Canyon’, but the Colorado River flowing through Dead Horse Point State Park, about 30 miles southwest of Moab. The police chase is at Cisco, Utah. Filming also took place at Thompson Springs and Valley City where you can stay at Desert Moon Hotel which has been serving the greater Moab area since the Uranium Boom days of the early 1950's.
There’s rugged beauty at every turn when you drive Highway 12, constructed in 1914, passing through some of the nation’s most rugged and diverse landscapes. Spanning 124 miles, SR-12 plays host to two national parks, three state parks, a national monument, and a national forest. From one of the world’s highest alpine forests to the rust-tinged walls of Red Canyon, expect to see golden-colored aspen leaves accent against the evergreens in fall while the colorful rocky scenery changes from pink to beige to yellow depending on which geological time period you are traveling through. You'll also come across the Dixie National Forest, called so because of the heat and all the southerners that settled there to grow cotton for the Mormon church. Utah is home to more than 2 million Mormons. Mormon settlers began a westward exodus in the 1830s. When they arrived in the valley of the Great Salt Lake, outside the boundaries of the United States, in 1847, they felt they had found a home.
Utah's spellbinding red-rock desert and high-altitude forests are just a few of the wonders to discover in heavenly Zion National Park. Mormon explorers arriving in this red-rock wonderland in the 1860s were so overwhelmed by the natural beauty of Zion Canyon and its surroundings that they named it after the Old Testament name for the city of Jerusalem. For Mormon pioneers, Zion was often used to mean the Kingdom of Heaven, sanctuary or a happy, peaceful place. If you’ve ever been to Zion National Park, you can understand why they felt this way about this sacred place.