The 11 best things to do in Kanab.

Coyote Buttes North is the most rationed hiking permit in the state and the Wave is the reason. Sixty four people a day, of which forty eight come from an advance lottery run months ahead and sixteen come from a daily lottery you can only enter from inside a geofence that covers this corner of the state.

That geofence is the whole point for anyone who lives here. A visitor gets a couple of days of tries. A resident gets three hundred and sixty five. The systems, the timings and the honest odds are all laid out on the permits and lotteries guide.

Buckskin Gulch is the longest hikeable slot canyon anywhere, and the easy way in is the Wire Pass trailhead off House Rock Valley Road. Wire Pass itself narrows within a mile and drops you into the main gulch, where the walls close over you and the light goes the colour of a held breath.

The day permit is inexpensive and bought through Recreation.gov rather than dropped in a trailhead box the way it once was. The road is the real gatekeeper: it is not routinely maintained and it is impassable when wet.

A state park of rose coloured dunes sitting in a bowl between the pine ridges, about twenty miles west of town. Most of the dune field is open to off highway vehicles, which is the local sand culture in a sentence: side by sides, sandboards, and summer evenings when the whole thing turns the colour of the name.

A section of the dunes has been closed to vehicles since 1997 to protect a tiger beetle found nowhere else on earth, which is worth knowing before you assume the whole field is open ground. The park guide covers riding, camping and the season.

Peekaboo, which people also call Red Canyon, is the picture most visitors have in their head when they think of a slot canyon near Kanab: tall red walls, Moqui steps cut into the rock, and moss where water sits. The walk itself is short, well under a mile in and out.

Getting there is the problem. The access road is deep sand for most of its length and all wheel drive will not do it. The realistic options are a four wheel drive with the tires aired down, a rented side by side, or a guided trip out of town. The slot canyon guide is honest about which is which.

The trail from the end of 100 East climbs to the rim above Kanab and it is the walk locals have used for generations. It was renamed the Kanab Trail in 2025 out of respect for the Paiute people. From the top you get the town, the creek and the cliffs in one view, and it connects into roughly eight miles of city trail loops on K Hill and through Tom's Canyon, some of them open to bikes.

Sunrise is the local ritual and it costs nothing. If you want one thing that tells you what living here is like rather than what visiting here is like, it is this one.

The Little Hollywood Museum sits at the west end of Center Street, costs nothing, and is built around actual sets rather than photographs of them. It is run as a nonprofit and it exists because more than a hundred productions were shot in this country between the 1920s and the 1970s.

Pair it with Parry Lodge a few blocks east, which has been open since 1931 and housed the stars during the filming years. The pool was built in 1956 at John Wayne's request. The film history guide covers what is still standing and what is not.

Right on the south edge of Kanab, with a walking loop around the water, fishing, and a disc golf course. It is not dramatic and it is not trying to be. It is the place people actually go on a Tuesday evening, which is a different and more useful category than a destination.

It is also one of the better spots close to town to put a horizon between you and the streetlights after dark.

A tunnel cut under the highway that water has worked into something that genuinely looks like the inside of an animal. It is a few minutes off US-89 north of town, it is free, and the walk is short enough that it fits into a drive rather than needing a day.

It is the one piece of slot canyon country around Kanab that asks nothing of you at all: no permit, no dirt road, no four wheel drive.

Western Legends fills Center Street in late August with a longhorn parade, music and a rodeo, and it has been running for more than a quarter century. It is the busiest weekend of the year in town.

Balloons and Tunes is the better one if you ask a local. Late February, when the visitor season is at its thinnest, dozens of balloon pilots launch in the cold morning air and the town gets its winter weekend back. Both events move by a week or so year to year, so confirm the dates with the city before you book anything around them.

Zion's east entrance is about forty minutes up US-89 and then State Route 9 through the Mount Carmel tunnel, which is a completely different arrival than the shuttle queue at the Springdale end. Bryce Canyon is about an hour and a half north. The Grand Canyon's North Rim is about eighty miles south through Fredonia on US-89A.

Do not try all three in a day. Do them across a long weekend and you will understand why people move here. The three parks guide has the real drive times, the tunnel restrictions and the current state of the North Rim, which changed after the 2025 fire.