Utah's Mighty Five are usually connected by 400 miles of asphalt. The Mighty Five Expedition Route connects them the other way. Running 677 miles from the coral sand west of Kanab to the Colorado River below Moab, the route uses the highways only where nothing else exists, and spends the rest of its length on county dirt, forest roads, wash bottoms, mining tracks, and shelf roads carved by uranium haulers. More than two-thirds of the mileage is unpaved. The parks are the anchors, but the country in between - the Markagunt and Aquarius plateaus, Grand Staircase-Escalante, the Waterpocket Fold, the San Rafael Swell - is what the route is actually about.

The run begins in the sand at Elephant Cove, on the BLM dune country west of Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park, and works northeast to Mount Carmel Junction. From there, the Zion-Mount Carmel Highway climbs its switchbacks, punches through the 1927 tunnel, and drops past Checkerboard Mesa to the canyon floor at 3,933 feet, the lowest ground on the route. The return east leads to the North Fork County Road, which climbs from the East Zion rim to more than 9,100 feet on the Markagunt Plateau through aspen and ponderosa, past Navajo Lake and Duck Creek Village. Stout Canyon Ridge, School Wash, and Glendale Bench carry the route back down to the Long Valley floor.

East of Glendale the route joins the Skutumpah Road, a long graded track through the western Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument that crosses Bull Valley Gorge country before turning north into the Dixie National Forest. Forest roads climb the Paunsaugunt Plateau and follow the East Fork of the Sevier past Tropic Reservoir to the rim at Bryce Canyon. Beyond the park, John's Valley Road and the Old Escalante Road lead onto the Aquarius Plateau and up the Griffin Top Road, which tops out at 10,602 feet in open alpine meadow with the whole Escalante basin laid out below. The descent runs past Posey Lake to the Hell's Backbone Road, where a CCC-built bridge crosses a knife ridge between Death Hollow and Sand Creek, and drops into Boulder.

Capitol Reef gets the longest treatment. The Burr Trail runs east from Boulder through Long Canyon and the Circle Cliffs, turns to dirt at the park boundary, and delivers the route to the Upper Muley Twist spur before dropping the famous switchbacks, roughly 800 feet of tight, exposed climbing rolled out along the face of the Waterpocket Fold. The Notom-Bullfrog Road then runs north along the east side of the Fold for 40 miles to Highway 24 and Fruita. From there, the route reverses into the Cathedral Valley district, fording the Fremont River onto the Hartnet Road, crossing the Bentonite Hills, and looping past the Temples of the Sun and Moon and the Upper Cathedral Valley overlook before exiting on Caineville Wash and the Caineville Reef Road beneath Factory Butte.

The San Rafael Swell leg is the most remote stretch of the trip. Wild Horse Road passes the mouth of Little Wild Horse Canyon and enters Goblin Valley State Park, then climbs North Temple Wash beneath Temple Mountain and its abandoned uranium workings. The Heart of Sinbad Road crosses the interior of the Swell at 6,700 feet, followed by Buckhorn Draw and the Black Dragon country north of I-70, before the Four Corners Mine Road drops into Green River, the only full-service town between Torrey and Moab and the natural resupply point on the route.

The final leg crosses the river bottoms past the Crystal Geyser road, follows Ruby Ranch and the old Valley City grade east, and enters Arches through the back door on the Salt Valley Road, arriving at Klondike Bluffs and Devils Garden from the north before running the main park road out to Highway 191. Potash Road carries the route back upstream along the Colorado past Corona Arch and Jug Handle Arch, then Long Canyon Road climbs 2,100 feet to the mesa top and Highway 313 leads past Dead Horse Point into Island in the Sky. The route finishes the way it should: down the Shafer Trail, 1,400 feet of switchbacks off the rim, and out along the potash flats to the river.