Beaver, Utah served as our home base for Halloween and day trips to hard-to-reach national parks.

October 31 - November 4, 2025

Beaver, Utah, Great Basin National Park (Nevada), Bryce Canyon National Park

“The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.” —Psalm 18:2

One of the tricky parts of the trip is making sure we see all the places we want to see while aligning those stops with the calendar. Our tour through Utah meant staying in very remote places where the only town-like amenities support the national parks.

So at the end of October, I was trying to figure out how we could get to remote Bryce Canyon (Utah) and very remote Great Basin National Park (Nevada) while also having a place for the kids to trick or treat.

Enter Beaver, Utah. On my trip-planning app, I noticed a tiny town off I-15 called Beaver had a KOA, one of our favorite campground chains. I did the travel math and found it was one hour to Bryce and two hours to Great Basin. Both of these I knew would be one-day parks, in which one day is sufficient to see most of what they have to offer.

So I booked four days at the Beaver KOA where we could stay parked while we hub-and-spoked to these destinations. We headed here after the desolate desert of Capitol Reef hoping to find kids and candy.

Trick or Treat

We quickly learned that Beaver, Utah is a wonderful place to spend Halloween. The town did a giant trunk-or-treat on Main Street where hundreds of kids came and got candy from the participating cars. There was a climbing wall, music, and lots of adults dressed up, too. It felt like the whole town was here.

It was really sweet to be observers of a small-town Halloween. The family in front of us going through the candy line with their kids knew absolutely everyone. At just about every car they passed, we saw hugs, handshakes, little conversations about the latest personal news. It reminded me of Sunday morning at our church, running into friends in the hallway, catching up on the latest everything. That sense of community often feels missing on this trip, where we are strangers everywhere we go. It was really sweet to witness a strong show of community in smalltown USA.

After the trunk or treat, we drove to the neighborhoods rumored to have the best trick or treat scene. And wowww did they ever. I will never forget the house that turned their entire garage and backyard into a Harry Potter amusement park, complete with dozens of lifesized Harry Potter characters. Our “Potterhead” kids were enthralled. And they did okay on their candy haul, too.

A Great Day in Great Basin

Great Basin National Park is one of the least visited national parks in the lower 48 states—often in the bottom five. We almost skipped it, too, because its remote location doesn’t make it easy to get to.

We drove the two hours to get there—a very easy drive because of long, straight roads and few other cars to contend with. It was a beautiful, clear day driving across the basin. You feel like you can see forever!

Great Basin National Park protects a rare convergence of landscapes, geology, and ecosystems, including desert, sagebrush steppe, pinyon-juniper woodland, aspen and subalpine forest, and alpine tundra. Mount Wheeler has the only remaining glacier in Nevada.

The park was, admittedly, a little underwhelming this time of year. The main road to the top of Mt. Wheeler, Nevada’s highest peek, was already closed for the season due to an earlier snowfall. The famed Lehman Caves were closed as well. Aaaand because of the shutdown, the Visitor Center was also closed. (Thankfully the restrooms and water fills stations were open!). So, this is the only park our kids don’t have junior ranger badges from, because there were zero park rangers in the park that day.

So, we settled on an eight-mile hike alongside Lehman Creek to take us toward the top of Mount Wheeler, where the closed road would have taken us. After spending several weeks surrounded by rocks, it was nice to be in a forest again. And, of course, the kids loved finding a bit of snow at the top of the hike.

We knew from our Guidalong Tour that one of the most impressive features of the park are the bristlecone pine trees near the summit of Mount Wheeler, estimated to be some 4,000 years old!! We were running out of daylight, so the kids and I didn’t make the trek, but Nick ran the trail and brought back these pictures of some very old trees.

We drove the easy two hours back to Beaver with tired legs after the mountain hike and treated ourselves to a rest day the next day.

Hoodoo Heaven

After a rest day, which included losing an hour of sunlight in the evenings due to daylight savings time, we drove the one hour to Bryce Canyon National Park.

Nick and I passed through here in 2009, kind of on a whim. We had backpacked through the Grand Canyon in one less day than planned, so we had a bonus day to explore Utah while driving toward Colorado. We did the drive and got out at several viewpoints, but didn’t have time to hike into the canyon.

When we got out at the Bryce Canyon “Amphitheater” and stared out into the forest of hoodoos, I almost couldn’t believe the view. For 16 years, I’ve had this feeling of wanting to return here. But I had honestly forgotten how beautiful it is.

Out of transparency, it’s worth noting that this same moment I was overwhelmed with awe seeing the canyon was quickly followed by a kid deciding they’d had enough of the trip, didn’t want to be here, didn’t want to do a hike. In hindsight, I suspect the melting of emotions was due to a lot of frequent changes in our location and probably a too-quick pace for this part of the trip, all designed to experience these places before snow at high elevations closed the roads and made access difficult. I’m honestly not sure what I could have done differently to have prevented this. Sometimes big emotions just need to happen, sometimes that happens at a world-class natural wonder.

So, we had a heart-to-heart, did our best to mitigate emotions in that moment, took some deep breaths, and set off on the hike. Within minutes, said child was racing down the trail into a slot canyon.

That morning we hiked the signature Navajo Gardens, Wall Street and Queens Garden loop trail. The hike is only 3.5 miles long, but the experience walking through these slick switchbacks, slender slot canyons, and oddball hoodoo formations is truly unforgettable.

From the pictures, you can’t even tell which kid didn’t want to be there :)

We wrapped up the hike, ate our lunch, and toured the rest of the park, stopping at more amazing viewpoints, like this massive arch.

If you ever get a chance to swing through Bryce, goooooo! It’s a place like none other that slides into your soul and calls you back for more.

Roberts on the Road

For those just finding us, hello! Inspired by the Year of Jubilee in Leviticus 25, our family is on a yearlong RV road trip in 2025-2026 to celebrate my husband’s retirement after 20 years in Naval Special Warfare, as well as our 24 years together during the ups and downs of it all.

With our 12-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son in tow, this trip to explore America’s national parks and beautiful places is intended to help our family reflect and reset as civilian life begins.

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For background info on who we are and where we’re traveling, we’d love for you to read the intro post. The full list of road trip blog posts can be found here. Thanks for stopping by!