You don’t need a flight or a week off to get out of town for a couple of days. There are real escapes within about two hours of Salt Lake City, close enough that you can leave after work on Friday and be checked in before dinner. I pulled together five of them below, with the drive times, what it costs, and when to go. Pick one and book it.
The Homestead Resort And The Crater
đź“Ť 700 Homestead Dr, Midway, UT 84049
đźš— 59 minutes from Salt Lake City
The Crater is the reason to come. It’s a geothermal spring 65 feet deep inside a limestone dome, and the water holds between 90 and 96 degrees all year. You can soak in it, snorkel it, do paddleboard yoga on it, or scuba dive it. That last one makes it the only warm-water dive site in the continental US. The resort wrapped around it has been running in Midway since the 1880s, and adds six heated pools, five fire pits and pickleball courts.
You stay on the property, in one of seventeen cottages. It works year-round. Winter brings cross-country skiing, sledding and snow tubing. Summer opens up paddleboarding, kayaking and blue-ribbon trout fishing. The Crater runs 10:30am to 9:30pm on weekdays and opens an hour earlier on weekends, and the town of Midway hosts s’mores most nights. I’d book the Crater ahead, especially for a weekend or a holiday. Reservations there aren’t a formality, and life jackets are included and generally required.
Park City Mountain
đź“Ť 1345 Lowell Ave, Park City, UT 84060
đźš— 46 minutes from Salt Lake City
At 7,300 acres this is the largest ski resort in the country, and the trail network runs past 400 miles. The Mid-Mountain Trail alone is 20 of them, and the Park City Epic is 25 plus. In summer the lifts keep turning for bikes and for anyone who just wants the ride up. The base adds a 3,000-foot alpine slide, mini golf, gem panning and rock climbing.
There’s lodging on the mountain and more of it down in town, so this one flexes to whatever you want to spend. Summer operations run July 1 through September 30. The rest of the year is ski season. Parking is the cost nobody plans for, at $60 to $80. Budget it, and get there early if you want a decent spot.
Snowbasin Resort
đź“Ť 3925 Snowbasin Rd, Huntsville, UT 84317
đźš— 57 minutes from Salt Lake City
Snowbasin has 3,000 acres of skiable terrain with 3,000 vertical feet under it. It hosted the downhill in the 2002 Olympics and has been picked for the alpine events again in 2034. The DeMoisy Express six-pack runs up to Strawberry Bowl, and the Strawberry Express Gondola climbs from the base. The Overlook sits at 8,700 feet if you want lunch with the view. Come summer, the same mountain turns into 26 miles of bike and hiking trails. It sits above Ogden, north of the city.
There’s no lodging on the mountain, so people stay in Ogden, 30 minutes away. Ski season runs Thanksgiving Day through mid-April, and the 26 kilometers of groomed Nordic trails hold up through the rest of the year. There’s a lift-assisted tubing hill with four lanes if you’ve got kids who aren’t skiing. What I like is that parking is free and needs no reservation, which is not something you can say about most resorts in this state. If you’d rather not drive at all, the UTA Ski Bus runs from downtown Ogden.
Sundance Mountain Resort
đź“Ť 8841 N Alpine Loop Rd, Sundance, UT 84604
đźš— 1 hour from Salt Lake City
Robert Redford bought the land in 1969 and kept the rooflines under the tree line, so what’s here is one small base at the foot of 12,000-foot Mount Timpanogos with 5,000 acres of protected ground around it. Winter is skiing, night skiing included. Summer is 25 miles of lift-served mountain biking, a zipline with a 2,100-foot vertical drop, guided fly fishing on the Provo River, and the hike out to Stewart Falls. The drive is I-15 south and then east up Provo Canyon on US-189.
Rooms run from the 63-room inn to cottages back in the trees to full mountain homes, and every stay includes the outdoor pools, the fitness center and daily yoga. Late September into early October is when the canyon turns, and that’s the stretch I’d aim for. Dinner is the Tree Room or the Foundry Grill, and the Owl Bar after that, built around an 1890s rosewood bar hauled down from a saloon in Thermopolis, Wyoming, where Butch Cassidy’s gang drank. It seats first come, first served, so go early on a Saturday. The Sundance Film Festival never ran up here, by the way. That was Park City, and it leaves Utah for Boulder in 2027.
Bear Lake And Garden City
đź“Ť Garden City, UT 84028
đźš— 2 hr 10 min from Salt Lake City
The water is turquoise and it isn’t a trick of the light. Microscopic calcium carbonate particles stay suspended in it and throw the blue back, so a lake 20 miles long and 8 miles wide ends up reading more like the Caribbean than northern Utah. Half of it sits in Idaho. The last stretch of the drive runs US-89 up through Logan Canyon and comes out at an overlook where the whole lake opens up at once.
Garden City has the rentals, cabins and condos near the water, and the state park campgrounds sit at Rendezvous Beach on the south shore and up at the marina. July and August are when the water gets into the mid 60s and low 70s, which is as warm as it gets at 5,900 feet. The first weekend of August is Raspberry Days, and the shakes at LaBeau’s and Merlin’s are why those parking lots stay full the rest of the summer. There are two ways to get there, US-89 through Logan Canyon or I-80 out through Evanston, Wyoming, and the canyon is the one to take. Beaver Mountain is 14 miles west of the lake if you’re coming in winter.
None of these will eat your whole weekend, and all of them are far enough out that it counts as leaving. Pick one, block off a Saturday and Sunday, and book it.
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