The Southwest | Travel Photography

I took a crazy roadtrip in May. I flew into Dallas, Texas, rented myself a cute little Hyundai Santa Fe and proceeded to drive 3400 miles through 5 states in 2.5 weeks. It was epic, exhausting, fun, and SO beautiful. A lot of the trip was spent visiting friends, but I spent one week (from Phoenix to Moab) with my boyfriend staying in hotels while we visited a bunch of national parks and beautiful places that I had always wanted to see. These are the photos from that part of the trip. Sedona, Grand Canyon, Horseshoe Bend, Antelope Canyon, Zion, Bryce Canyon, and Arches. It was a whirlwind and I loved it. I’ll start with Sedona. On our first day, we sipped wine on the top of a hill in Sedona as we watched the sunset. Everyone else there was very jealous of our wine. I was happy.

The next day, we decided to stop by the Grand Canyon purely on a whim – it wasn’t originally on our itinerary. It was so cold and windy but so worth it. I had only been once ever, in 8th grade, so I was happy to go back on a day with such incredible light

And then we drove like crazy to get to Horseshoe Bend by sunset for a photoshoot. You can see more from that shoot here! blog/2017/06/01/kim-and-jesse-horseshoe-bend-couples-photos/

We got up at the crack of dawn the next morning so we could be the very first tour group through Antelope Canyon. Oh my god it was unreal. Even though we didn’t go at noon when the light is best, I loved that we were the first group inside, which meant we got a much less crowded and quieter experience

From there we drove north to Zion. We were supposed to spend two days hiking and exploring, but the weather had other plans. Other than our first evening there, it rained (and even snowed!) almost the whole time. It was a bummer but it also made for some cool moody shots which I was totally okay with

Once we left Zion, we drove through snow flurries and made another last minute decision to go to Bryce Canyon as well. It was *kind of* on the way. So worth it

Finally, we trekked across Utah and made our way to Arches, National Park. It closed at 7pm the first night we were there so we ended up getting up SUPER early the next day for a sunrise hike to Delicate Arch before we drove to Denver. Seriously, such an incredible place and it was the perfect way to end our time together before I continued on to Colorado alone! I’ll share more from the other parts of the trip later