Day 13 - Moab, UT to Page, AZ

Wednesday, May 16, 2018

Weather:  Hotter today, high 80s to low 90s, with sunny skies.

Steps: Shaun - n/a, Shannon - 7,573

Wednesday, we woke up at 8am to pack the car and leave Moab. We ate breakfast on the way out of town at Hidden Cuisine, and the oatmeal and eggs benedict were great!

Heading down the road toward the Needles District of Canyonlands, we saw Wilson Arch and then stopped at Newspaper Rock. This is a rock wall that is COVERED in petroglyphs from many cultures through hundreds of years. It’s fascinating to look over and then read what the different symbols might have meant.

Once we reached the Needles District, we immediately stopped at the visitors center (the pattern continues) and watched a movie about the erosional processes that created the rock forms in Canyonlands National Park. From there, we drove to the end of the road and walked among the mushroom-shaped forms we found there for awhile.

On our return trip, we stopped at Pothole Point and hiked .6 miles around the edge of a pockmarked ledge to see long views of the districts. The potholes were empty, but it was still a beautiful area and a nice hike.

We thought there would be a picnic area at the end of the long, unpaved road to Elephant Hill, but there wasn’t, so we drove back to a picnic area we had seen previously and ate a fine spread out in nature. After lunch, we left Canyonlands, and, instead of heading back down the same road we had come in on, we took a side road up and over a mountain into Monticello (pronounced Mon-ti-sello, apparently). We saw some incredible views of the La Sal Mountains and the two national parks along the way, and then began our trek to Monument Valley in earnest.

It was two hours down to Monument Valley, from Utah into the Navajo Nation. We arrived just after 6pm and were barely allowed in, as the gates closed to new visitors at 6:30 and the road had to be emptied entirely by 8pm.

The road was pretty rough, and weenies who didn’t know how to drive made for slow going. However, the scenery was absolutely beautiful, and the raking light from the sun setting made for some interesting light and shadow play.

We finished the circuit and headed to the visitors center (look! We changed it up a bit and went to the visitors center after the attraction!), which was awesome. There was gorgeous art and jewelry by Navajo artists, and, of course, we did our part to support the local economy.

We caught the sunset over the valley and then had dinner in the restaurant there on site. Oh man! The fry bread was amazing! The drive from Monument Valley to Page, Arizona was long, and we were super tired when we arrived, so we immediately went to bed.

Day 12 - Moab, UT

 

Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Weather:  Sunny, low 80s

Steps: Shaun - 6,600?, Shannon - 10,208

For the second morning in a row, we woke up early to get to the Moab Adventure Center by 6:45am for our half-day rafting trip. A bus took us 45 minutes down scenic Rte. 129 to a boat launch, and we spent two hours floating down the Colorado River.

We encountered four sections of class 1 and 2 rapids, with lots of beautiful scenery in between. We saw cliff swallows and a few lizards along the way too.

Our group pulled out before hitting the big rapids further down the river, and then we had to stand around for 15 minutes waiting for the bus to pick us up. Shaun managed to find a lady who was from Arkansas to chat with while we waited.

The bus trip back to the center felt super long, even though it was actually shorter than on the way out. Still, there were beautiful views as we traveled between the canyon walls along the river back to Moab.

We returned to the apartment to change and then ate lunch at another Thai restaurant. From there, we went to Dead Horse Point State Park, with a brief stop at Arches to finally return the audio tour we had gotten two days previously.

At Dead Horse, we walked along a nature trail that featured native and medicinal plants and then visited the nearby visitors center (does that surprise you?). The trail was great, but the visitors center was pretty lame, with its only redeeming quality being awesome windows that looked out over the expanse of the park.

We drove to the end of the point for views of the gooseneck in the Colorado River directly below, as well as Thelma and Louise’s cliff, Shafer Canyon and White Rim Trails, etc...all the places we had seen up close the previous day. It definitely made us appreciate the jeep tour more.

From Dead Horse, we continued down the road to the north section of Canyonlands, called Island in the Sky. We bought a book tour of the scenic drive and followed it along the way.

Our first and only hike of the day was a short one, just .5 miles roundtrip, to Mesa Arch. We could see Washerwoman Arch from there as well.

The end of one fork in the road was Grand View Point, which was amazing. The other end was Upheaval Dome, which we didn’t see because we would have had to hike 2 miles and it was near sunset by that time. 

The setting sun made for some interesting views along the road as we drove back out of the park. One side of the road was bathed in raking light, while the other was in shadow and desaturated of color. It was hard taking pictures of the latter side, but it sure was beautiful to observe.

We found a good spot to stop and watch the sunset in the park, but we decided that we were too tired to stay and ended up returning to Moab. Instead, we ran errands, packed, and ate dinner. Lame, we know.

Tomorrow, we leave Utah and head to Arizona, by way of the Navajo Nation.

Day 11 - Moab, UT

Monday, May 14, 2018

Weather:  Sunny and low 80s during the day; clear, moonless night in the high 50s.

Steps: Shaun - 9,834, Shannon - 8,727

We had to get up at the buttcrack of dawn today to be at the Navtec Expeditions Center at 6:30am for an all-day off-roading tour of Canyonlands and Arches National Parks. We arrived on time, but then we had to wait for the guide and pick up another couple before heading into the first park, Canyonlands.

Our guide was a long-time resident of Moab who was very colorful. He had worked in what seemed like every job over the years and had a story for everything. Of course, he was in good company with Shaun.

We started the trip by going back down Potash Road, the road we had explored a few days before, but rather than turning around when the pavement ended, we continued on. We were able to see the evaporation ponds used to extract the potash from the water, which has been pumped underground to create a slurry that brings the potash to the surface. The ponds are dyed blue to speed up evaporation. Once the water is gone, the potash is scraped up by big machines and is used as fertilizer.

We also got to see the petroglyphs that we had been unable to find when we drove down Potash Road the first time. When we finally spied them, eye-level, right where the sign said they were, we felt like idiots, but oh well, we saw them today! Oh, and we saw some dinosaur tracks too.

In Canyonlands, we went up the White Rim and Shafer Canyon Trails, with tons of switchbacks and beautiful vistas. It wasn’t too bad in terms of road roughness, and along the way, we saw the place where Thelma and Louise’s car went over the cliff (spoiler alert?). 

We also got to walk in the footsteps of dinosaurs where a layer of rock had been uncovered that still had impressions from their feet. Really cool.

Our group ate lunch off the tailgate of the jeep, and then headed to Arches. The “roads” were A LOT rougher there, and we got knocked around quite a bit. We visited Delicate Arch and the Windows Section, and then bumped and jerked our way to Tower Arch. We found what looked like a Jeep convention in the parking lot, but it was cool to see the arch with the tower overhead.

To end the tour, we traveled down a slightly less rough road to the Eye of the Whale Arch. It was low on the wall, and while we eventually found it, the whale part was hard to see. Since we were still out in the middle of nowhere with a ways to go before returning to the Navtec Center, Shaun had to pee behind a bush. Classy. 

Overall, we would give the tour a 7 out of 10. We enjoyed exploring parts of both parks that we wouldn’t have otherwise gotten to see, especially in Canyonlands, where so much of the park is backcountry. Our guide was a character, for sure, and knowledgeable about a wide variety of things, but more of a jack-of-all-trades-and-master-of-none type. 

We ate at Arches Thai for dinner, which had good food but slow service, and then relaxed for 90 minutes until we had to meet our group for our astronomy trip. We caravanned with the group to the top of the mesa above Moab and made a square of the cars in a campground parking lot to block the lights from cars and people on the road.

Our guide, Alex, talked while he set up a computerized telescope. He showed us nebulae, star clusters, colliding galaxies, and Jupiter with four of its moons visible. There were ten of us in the group, so after each person looked in the telescope for a minute or more for each sight, we ended up being out until midnight. It was fun and interesting, though, so we thought it was worth it. Afterward, we went back to the apartment to drop into exhausted sleep until an early wakeup the next morning.