One of the more unexpected places you’ll visit in the Greater Zion area is Sand Hollow State Park. Located in Hurricane, Utah, the park offers 20,000 acres of activities, from diving, paddleboarding, and fishing to camping, ATV riding, and wildlife watching, with scorpions burrowing in the sand and ospreys gliding overhead. With its deep-blue 1,322-acre reservoir and miles of rolling red sand dunes that create Sand Mountain, Sand Hollow State Park might be one of Utah’s best-kept secrets. 

In part of Utah known for its Navajo Sandstone, you’ll see plenty of the reddish-orange rock throughout the landscape, especially in the park’s most distinctive feature. Colorful rolling dunes cover 15,000 acres of the park, forming the northernmost section of the Mojave Desert—just a few hours from the Arizona Steppe, one of the most remote areas in the contiguous United States.

One of the best ways to explore the dunes is with a three-hour ATV tour with ATV Off Road Adventures. Climb up the gorgeous Red Plateau on a two-person ATV and pass through red-rock monuments with views of the reservoir and Zion’s cliffs just past the 350,000-year-old Santa Clara volcano. 

The reservoir is also worth checking out, especially on hot summer days. Originally created in 2002 by diverting part of the Virgin River to provide drinking water for local residents, the almost always warm-water reservoir is now home to numerous fish, including bass and bluegill, as well as a sunken VW bus and an airplane for divers to explore. 

And while Sand Hollow is Utah’s most visited state park, its vastness and variety of activities make it feel far less crowded than you’d expect. I was able to sit at the water’s edge watching a family of kayakers paddle to Rock Island, teens jump from the cliffs, and kids play at the swim beach. As the sun started to set, I watched the day visitors’ taillights disappear, campers turn in for the evening, and the red rocks turn grey under the moon—wondering what all I’d see tomorrow.