It's enough to spoil a vacation. You might as well stay home. In fact, you should.
Do Utah's economy, your state's tourism industry and your household budget a favor. Use this as an opportunity to rediscover Utah. Take a vacation in the Beehive State.
Utah has it all. We have five national parks - Zion, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Arches and Capitol Reef - and a host of national monuments, recreation areas, historic sites and forests. We have 43 state parks, some that rival the national parks for scenery and facilities. And we have some of the finest resorts and best hotels in the nation, not to mention more campgrounds than you can count.
Come to the capital city - Hogle Zoo, Tracy Aviary, Red Butte Garden, Fort Douglas, Clark Planetarium, museums, concerts, professional sports. That's just a sampling. You can make a week of it.
Or head north to the Great Salt Lake, Bear Lake, the Golden Spike National Historic Site, the Spiral Jetty, Lagoon amusement park or the aerospace museum at Hill Air Force Base.
Go west to the desert, the salt flats, the Bingham Canyon copper mine or the Stansbury Mountains.
In the east you'll find Dinosaur National Monument, the petroglyphs of Nine Mile Canyon, Flaming Gorge reservoir, the Green River, Timpanogos Cave and the high Uintas.
And in the south are slickrock canyons, buttes, mesas, hoodoos, arches, rivers, lakes and reservoirs that are not only nationally, but internationally, acclaimed destinations.
The Utah Division of Travel, trying to drum up business in trying times, is casting close to shore, hoping to reel in tourists from Denver, Phoenix, Los Angeles and other regional markets. But the big fish - Utah's 2.6 million residents - are right at their feet.
When you stay in-state for your summer vacation, so do your sales, gas, restaurant and accommodations tax dollars. Money that you spend in Utah, particularly if you frequent locally owned businesses, recirculates within our communities, multiplying the economic impact. And the money that you save at the pump and the airline ticket counter can pay for a fall getaway - in Utah, of course.
