We have been travelling for the past two weeks through southern Utah, canyon country. I have had the National Parks of Bryce Canyon, Zion and Arches on my list for quite some time, but along the way we added a few more national parks and a couple National Forests to the list of must see places. I wasn’t prepared for the amount of sights and variety of each of the different types of geology in the area. I highly recommend you take the trip here to see it yourself.
First off was Arches, this one has hundreds of arches created from sandstone, the park was pretty busy, and the road passes by the majority of the arches. So the short trails were shared with many people, but the arches themselves were still amazing. We got started around noon and were able to see all the sites by 3, so I took a longer trail at the end of the road, seeing a few more arches, walking through Devil’s Garden and taking the primitive trail back.
The trail was a bit poorly marked, so I did lose my way for a bit, so I returned just before the sun was setting, we drove out to a nice spot and watched it go down together. But the late stay was a lucky mistake, as the lighting at dusk makes the canyon even more beautiful. I couldn’t keep my eyes in my head, I just stared around at all the canyons as we drove out, at least twice as beautiful compared to the day.
Next up we hit up Canyonlands NP, first staying just outside the Island in the Sky area at Horsethief campground. We have found that there is often Bureau of Land Management campgrounds just outside the parks here, and were rarely filled up, sometimes we found dispersed campgrounds that lacked any facilities but made up for it with views and solitude. I have been using the app iOverlander to find most of these, it really has great listings and works well even without cell reception, really a great find, thanks Mijke for the tip. Canyonlands Island in the Sky area is a high plateau surrounded by canyons, formed by the Green and Colorado rivers and their convergence. There is two major layers, the top plateau and what is called the white rim, so you have the top plateau, then a cliff down about 500 feet to another flatter area before dropping again several hundred feet to the rivers.
The road at the top brings you around to many views. I also took a hike dropping down steeply from the plateau, then followed a wash out to below the white rim, and then steeply back up to the white rim, a long flat over the white rim, joining back up just in time for the intense hike back up the steeps to the plateau. Down at the bottom was white rim road, I saw multiple 4x4s following the white rim road as well as some mountain bikers. Someday I will return with a jeep and tour the 100 mile white rim road.
We took a day to get cleaned up in Moab between the north and south areas of Canyonlands. Doing laundry was the easy part, but washing 3 weeks of bugs and grime off the motorhome is a huge job, it took us 1.5 hrs and $12 worth of coins to get it back to mostly clean. We also took the opportunity to get some Mexican food for lunch which was a good alternative to leftovers or sandwiches we have been having for lunch.
The needles area, the south part of Canyonlands was quieter and a bit smaller. We enjoyed this area but had seen most of the sights in a hour or two, so I took another long hike through Squaw and Big Springs Canyons, it was a beautiful hike.
The next day we headed over to the head of Lake Powell, along the way stopping at Natural Bridges National Monument. There were 4 natural bridges in the park, 3 viewable from road stops, we opted not to do the hike down to see the 4th. I did learn the difference between Natural bridges and Arches, is has to do with erosion types. Water for natural bridges and wind plus freeze thaw cycle for arches. The loop took us about an hour, definitely worth a stop if are traveling along this route.
We camped that night on Lake Powell, the temps had jumped up to 75, so I took the opportunity to take out the paddle board, it was nice to paddle in the shadows of such beautiful cliffs.
Believe it or not, that is just half of our adventure in Utah, so I will follow it up with another post describing the southwest next.
