the ultimate utah road trip | moab, bryce canyon, zion

Auto-captioned from the film, lightly cleaned. Elena's words, not edited prose.

hi hello how's it going it's elena and i'm about to embark on a week-long journey throughout utah four my friends and i decided to plan a road trip to basically get out of the city a little bit immerse ourselves in nature just kind of focus on disconnecting from like work stress and the internet and things like that and focus instead and like connecting with one another and with nature and clearing our heads and i am so excited i've always wanted to explore utah i've been to utah once but just to salt lake city so i'm very excited to get into like the true beauty that utah's known for so let's look at the game plan we've decided that we would start off in moab and then slowly road trip down to bryce canyon and then from there finally end up in zion over the course of about a week or so it's obviously been a crazy year and a half for pretty much everyone out there i know for me one of the things that really always seems to help my mental health is getting outside oh i feel like this trip is just gonna be so lovely and really is coming at the right time also this video is sponsored by betterhelp which is another incredible way to work on your mental health if you're kind of just struggling in general especially when it comes to mental health betterhelp will assess your needs and basically match you with a professional therapist you can be matched in less than 48 hours it's really incredible i've been using better help for over a year now and i am a huge fan not a crisis line or self-help or anything like that it's professional counseling but it's done all online which i quite like i like to be able to do it in like the comfort of my own bedroom it feels really safe and secure you can log on at any time and send a message to your counselor and you can schedule whenever you'd like for doing it you know a phone call a video call a tech session and it's available worldwide as well what i also love about it is that it's more affordable than traditional offline 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gonna climb up this little guy and then head over to the arch we're live how crazy is this you look like you're about to get like sucked up by an alien this is beautiful a blurry sandwich so after that lovely little picnic good morning hike we decided to go back and give arches national park another try triumphant times is so captivating there's clusters of these incredible sandstone formations jutting out of the ground everywhere you look hello little update from orchards national park got the ladies in the back i feel like i've been transported to a new world also shout out to hocas and they are the most comfortable shoes i've ever worn i'm going to start just wearing these around new york city because i feel like a changed woman and we keep joking that they look like moon boots every time we come to a new spot we like we're forcing ourselves to be grounded and take deep breaths to like be present i'm going to touch the down rock touch the dirt basically what you do is you close your eyes as you breathe in and then you open your eyes as you exhale it's a good um uh real update day two our tire has like a nail in it or something so we're at the local tire shop thank god we weren't like in the middle of the desert we're in moab and they're so nice so now we have to kill some time because the tire's not good the realities of traveling here we are just four girls taking one thankfully we saw the tire when we were in a small town still so we got it fixed so after that little hiccup we finally headed out towards bryce canyon it is a bit of a drive so we decided to make the most of the journey along the way and we decided to make a little pit stop at capitol reef national park which is in utah's south central desert hello we just drove two hours from moab and now we're at capitol reef national park this is kind of like a good place to stop in between because it's about two hours out and it's another two hours to price so it just kind of helps break it up so i think we're gonna do a nice big hike here i'm doing the grand wash hike and i hope we see this guy and this guy one day in action so many eggs hello we just made it to fry's canyon i feel very ready for a long walk i'm ready for this great how long's three hours like 5.4 or something yeah we're at peek-a-boo trail let's go oh my gosh this is insane guys this is the most insane thing i am fully in awe it's so incredible it makes you feel so small in such an incredible way okay change of plans trail goes to the head we were gonna do peekaboo but it's closed because it snowed and it's starting to get icy so we're gonna go hunt for another trail and if not we'll just keep on heading over to zion so we're staying flexible things never go i know things never got was planned on trips like this which is a okay bryce canyon's absolutely insane if you come definitely come to bryce point right here and go like see the little lookout spot it's absolutely incredible we have mountain lions here geology what wildlife do we got coming in we really hope to see a mountain lion oh yeah utah prairie dog oh my god so cute that's the queen's garden trail here in bryce canyon it's full of all these switchbacks it's actually quite steep is so we're currently surrounded by hoodoos apparently they're like formed by like the perfect combination of like the way the wind blows through here and water the closest thing i can equate it to is thunder mountain and disneyland if you've been there you know it's pretty accurate i feel like i'm about to like board on the little cart and just start making my way down these little switchbacks see the tears the stars are spinning like a mirror of the good morning from zion it's our first full day here and i can't believe we finally made it do you see this behind me i cannot believe we made it i've been talking about coming to zion for so many years because i'm from california i think this might be the most beautiful place i've ever been i've noticed too with like continuous hikes every day for many hours each new hike i feel like clears your mind more and more and just on the way here we're having such good chats about what our top values are for life what matters to us kind of thinking about moving forward into the future and like growing up because i think when you're like around something like this and you're just left with your thoughts you get such a sense of just like clarity reminder of the most natural important things in life when all like the distractions fade away nobody is losing faces reach and change i'll pick these strings we're delusional as hell right now we just got some food in springdale a little town in zion now we're gonna go for a little walk um because you know stretched out lakes even though we walked 10 miles earlier i just ate a lot ten and a half ten and a half i just take a lot of fries and maybe some ice cream so a little walk could be nice we're going out there anyways hello from zion we are about to embark on emerald pools trail so you have to take a shuttle which we didn't know until we got here you have to park and take a shuttle to access a bunch of trails which honestly wasn't that bad the spot that we're in right now it's kind of this like canyon and there's like these huge like cliff faces surrounding us and the only thing that like i can slightly compare to it is switzerland specifically like interlaken lauterbrunnen area where it's obviously a very different typography it's not this like red rock sharp cliff face but it's like those beautiful green faces with the waterfalls and like it's just so i don't insane what i'm bringing maybe someday when i've grown older i can see it all day from above looking back on it all cow