Best In The West

The Lodge at Blue Sky in Utah combines immersive back-to-nature experiences with a conservation-minded ethos—to extraordinary results.

- Lila Harron Battis

The water rippled as the wind picked up on the pond. I flicked my rod, watching the lure dance above the surface and back— straight into a tree. Henry Hudson, who oversees adventures for Blue Sky and bears no relation to the explorer of the same name, laughed it off and pointed across the shore. “See how the waves are going towards that bank? That’s your spot.” I trudged through the last dregs of snowpack and cast. Nothing. Stick. Nothing. Cattail. Nothing. Then resistance, a tug-of-war, and finally: a trout, iridescent and speckled. I was elated. I texted my husband a photo—me grinning like a golden retriever, my fish slack-jawed and muscling against my grip, Henry Hudson smiling encouragingly over my shoulder—along with a message: “We have to move to Utah.”

Before this trip, I’d never given Utah much thought. I knew the big things: The Great Salt Lake. Arches and Canyonlands and Zion, which seemed like their own places somehow. Notable Utahn Tan France. Mormons, naturally. The state existed in my peripheral vision as a maybe-someday destination. But after a stay at The Lodge at Blue Sky, a new resort set on 3,500 acres near Park City, I was sold.