Best of the Canyonlands

Great itinerary. Fantastic tour guide and driver.

Absolutely beautiful

June, 2025: Every detail we cared about was taken care of by Trafalgar. We arrived at the Denver Hilton Slate Hotel to overnight and meet our travel group at dinner. It was a former schoolhouse and beautifully appointed. The Guide of Boundless Energy was smart, so interested in making sure we were enjoying every day on or off the bus and was very knowledgeable in explaining the cultural aspects of our stops. She kept us on schedule from place to place and provided snacks on the bus. The driver drove mountainous I-70 as an expert. They both checked ahead and knew when we had to detour due to road construction. There were three single women traveling alone on the trip and they were very comfortable. Our baggage was handled at every stop and right to our hotel room door and back to the bus the next morning. Points of interest were achieved we were promised in the trip writeup. Arches National Park was breathtaking and we had time to walk into the park and explore. There were ample restrooms. Canyonlands Natl. Park was beautiful. A high point was visiting the Puebloan archaeological sites. We stayed overnight in Moab and had the best ham and bean soup at the well known local diner. Check with the hotel staff. The group stayed overnight at a Navajo Reservation hotel. The next morning, drivers in several small busses drove us to some remote areas on the reservation to take pictures. Our female driver/guide sang a Navajo safe-journey song to us near completion of our reservation ride. We visited places we never would have known or been willing to drive to. This trip was such a GRAND SUCCESS for my spouse and myself.... we are taking a September Trafalgar 9- day trip to Colorado 3 months later. Oh.... and the last evening dinner at the Grand Canyon consisted of an open bar and the best steak dinner and sides. The dinner and wishing Adios to new found friends was a wonderful close to the trip.

Never been there. So I now know more than before. Beautiful part of this country. Plenty of time to look and learn. Rating would be higher if there were no ill people on the bus. All of us in my group became sick also. I am just now recovering 2 weeks later. Poorest grades to the bathroom facilities near the end when we were forbidden from using the rest room.

It was a fantastic trip our tour giude was awesome and our bus driver was great

I would like to stay an extra day at the Grand Canyon. Mesa Verde National Park it was ok.

I have let many people know how amazing the trip was and highly recommend it to all my friends!

This was a great opportunity to take in several of the major national parks in a single trip. The hotels were all nice (even those in the parks), food was great, and the guide/driver were friendly and knowledgeable. Highly recommended if you want to take the Grand Canyon and other sites off your bucket list.

Overall the trip was excellent. The only downside was that the stop at Vale of 30 minutes was much too short. An hour would have allowed us to see more of the town.

It's a lot of miles in a few days but well worth it!

f you are looking for jaw dropping scenery, this trip is for you! The canyons were so breathtaking and unique, that you actually felt like you were on another planet. This tour is a must see and I personally cannot still believe all of the beauty I was exposed to. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. I would highly recommend it in the spring, early early summer or fall. With that being said, I shall make some comments of things I wish I knew beforehand. Know that while you are on this tour, you are traveling through deserts and very small towns. There is not much along the way nor is there a lot in these towns. Hotels along the journey were plain, clean and accommodating. The Hilton in Denver and Harrahs in Vegas were fantastic because they were in major cities. Lunch stops for food resulted in fast food or going to a grocery store. Grocery stores were a great stop since often one might need other supplies, and you could pick up fruit, lunch and drinks at reasonable prices. Since travel took us through areas where food stops were few and far between due to the terrain, make sure you bring lots of snacks, water and Gatorade like drinks. You are up high, sometimes 9000 feet, it is hot and dry. One can easily become dehydrated. There were some downsides to this vacation for me. One was the hotel breakfasts. Every day we had eggs, bacon, cut up fruit (sometimes it was spoiled) and potatoes. There was only one hotel in Moab where we were able to have a premade omelet, cold cereal, yogurt and pancakes. After a while the breakfasts became boring not to mention unhealthy. The second disappointment was a stop over to an organic garden. It was way too hot to have lunch outside. The lunch consisted of a small amount of homemade vegetable pizza, salad, a cookie and a spritz of whipped cream. We were on the bus for long stretches on this day and it wasn't enough food nor was it nutritious enough to sustain the long day of travel. The owner of the farm did not have the personality to conduct a tour group and though she verbally encouraged interaction, she truly couldn't be bothered. The gardens were nothing special and not worth the stop. In Moab, there is an optional excursion for a dinner cruise. Many thought this dinner would be on the boat. It's not. It is in a room and is a buffet. There was a lot to eat......pulled pork, pulled chicken, pulled beef, salad, cole slaw, beans, potatoes and rolls. There was one problem. The meat was too spicey hot for many of the guests who ended up throwing it out. Even the beets for the salad were spicey hot. Some people like spicey, others don't or can't tolerate it. I was one of them. The boat tour of part of the canyon was nice, the story was interesting, the lights on the canyon wall were pretty, the guide was funny, but it wasn't worth the price for me because I all I could eat was the salad greens, beans and potatoes. I ended up going to another restaurant for dinner afterwards. Suggestion to this boat tour company, cut out the spices on the food and offer flavored sauces and you have a nice excursion. The welcome dinner at Maggiano's in Denver and the last dinner at the Grand Canyon were spectacular. My gosh, there was a lot of delicious food. For breakfast the day after the tour ended, we were instructed to go to a restaurant which was 17 minutes by foot in 100-degree heat. I would suggest Trafalgar skip this on their next tour for it was too far from the hotel after a long trip. The majority of us who stayed overnight at Harrahs did not go to this breakfast but rather enjoyed breakfast at our hotel where the prices were very reasonable and the breakfast was delicious. Getting ready to fly home on this day, we opted for a leisurely breakfast close by. Our tour director was . She was professional, detail oriented, experienced, caring, kind and absolutely wonderful. Knowing we had long days of travel where lunch might be a little later than usual, she provided snacks for us on numerous occasions. She was knowledgeable about the areas we traveled. Movies were shown, music was played and games where conducted which coordinated with the trip. To say the least, Ann went out of her way to ensure we had a safe and enjoyable trip. When construction hampered our travel, she found routes around it and even provided an interesting stop along the way. The tour bus was clean and I felt safe with driver .

This was not a separate tour, it was a continuation of another tour that started a week earlier (this was not clearly stated in the tour description). So, most of the 46 people on the tour had been together for a week prior to my starting, which was awkward. Two full days of the tour were fully on the bus or at rest stops. The tour mentioned stopping in Vail, that turned out to be the transportation depot for rest rooms only. Lunch on your own turned out to be stops at grocery stores to pick up food to eat on the bus. The only enjoyable days were at Arches (we actually had time to hike trails), the jeep ride at Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon where we also had time to walk trails. One passenger coughed most of the day on the bus - by the last day multiple people were coughing and I also got sick. If Trafalgar was more honest in their trip descriptions, I probably wouldn't have signed up for this trip - it was disappointing especially after the fabulous Canadian Rockies Tour I took with Trafalgar last year.

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