Utah Rocks!

It took us a little while to get out of town on Saturday, May 15. We realized that we needed to go back by Camilla Mohn's house because we had had our mail forwarded there while we were on the river raft trip. We had kind of forgotten about that. But first we had to find an AT&T store, because Liz was going to get a big treat. We felt she had done such a tremendous job on the raft trip that we should strongly consider getting her the cell phone that she has been pining for. So we did ..... she was super excited, and is starting to learn about how to keep track of it and not lose it!

By the time we did all this, it was afternoon, and we had planned to make it to Moab, Utah, to finish our visits of those beautiful red rock areas .... Arches and Canyonlands National Parks. We headed up I15 past St. George and Cedar City, and then turned east at Interstate 70. Four hundred and fifty miles later we rolled into an RV park just north of the turn-off to Canyonlands. We had a really narrow campsite, but decided we COULD put our slides out without hitting the motorhome next to us, so we pushed out the bedroom wall and hit the hay!

We had learned that there was a very popular hike in Arches .... the Fiery Furnace, which took reservations. We actually hadn't been entirely certain of our dates when we would be there, but by the time I had a pretty good prediction, the reservations were out until August. But I heard from someone on the raft trip that they did save a few spots on the hike for people who arrived at the visitor center each day and wanted to go. So we decided to be there at the Visitor Center on Sunday, May 16th when they opened at 7:30 a.m. We actually thought it would be good to be there early, so we got there at 6:30. Liz and I hung out in the parking lot in the car, while Gary read a book by the door. We were the first ones in, and were able to get a reservation for the Fiery Furnace hike (for Liz and Gary) at 10:00 on Tuesday, the 18th. A guy was right behind us who said that he needed 4 tickets for that day for people he was "guiding" into the park. But there weren't any ...... obviously he hadn't really planned ahead.

So we slightly adjusted our plans, and decided to stay until 1 o'clock on Tuesday so they could do this hike where you walk through narrow slot canyons and crawl through small canyon spaces.

The rest of the day we decided to spend in Canyonlands. You may remember we visited the southern part of Canyonlands .... the Needles .... in late April, but we wanted to do the signature visit to Island in the Sky. Below the entrance sign you can see a diagram from the National Park Service brochure which shows how the Green and Colorado Rivers, and their confluence, carve out this island.

The Island in the Sky is a plateau of land that is surrounded by canyons all the way around.

You enter over a small "neck" of land (see sign middle below), with canyon walls sloping way on either side.

and then you are peering down to river canyons and other plateaus and mesas all around you.

This is the view through Mesa Arch and then below looking down to the left and to the right (on the right).

It was fun to see all the areas down below the "island," and it felt like you really were looking out at a "sea" of canyon lands.

And down along the edge of the next level was the White Rim Road, which can be circumnavigated in a jeep.

Driving back toward Moab was the turn off to Dead Horse Canyon. You'll be able to read below the story behind this, where wild horses were driven onto this high plateau, with another narrow neck, and then it was blocked off so that it became a natural corral. The part of the story about not letting the unselected horses go free was kind of troublesome, but otherwise it was a great story of the Old West.

The view from Dead Horse Canyon point down to the Colorado River

On the right below you can see where the road is narrow and the pieces of wood are stacked on the sides which, in times when wild horses were driven onto the mesa, the wood would be pulled together to enclose the corral.

We weren't able to visit the more remote part of Canyonlands National Park which is hard to reach to the west. It is called The Maze, seen below in the distance, with canyon upon canyon all running together. In the maze is Robbers Roost and it is said that this is where Butch Cassidy and the Hole-in-the-Wall gang would go to get lost. It seems likely.

The next day, Monday, May 17, was a little slow. We slept in a bit, and went in to Moab for breakfast and to pick up our mail. Gary's new cell phone arrived and Liz' end of the 4th grade testing materials arrived. Minnesota home-schooling guidelines require that she take a standardized test, so we ordered the usual Iowa Test of Basic Skills from the University of Minnesota Testing service. We plan to give this to her at the end of the month. We also did a little grocery shopping, and I spent a little time looking for a book I wanted about the Grand Canyon.

Later in the afternoon we returned to Arches National Park to see the things we could get to by car. The Fiery Furnace hike is scheduled for tomorrow.

When you first enter Arches, one of the first big collections of rock is called Park Avenue.

And just a little ways down the road is The Three Gossips ....

We saw "baby" arches just starting to be formed .... erosion that is starting to eat away at each end. On the right, in the distance, is North and South Arch in the Windows Section.

We saw some beautiful wild flowers along our drive.

Next came Balancing Rock (in the middle on the left), and then a brief walk to Sand Dune Arch where Liz posed in the slot canyon leading up there.

I was able to catch this Raven with Broken Arch in the background.

We ended the day with a little walk to Landscape Arch, one of the longest in the park. We tried to take the picture of the three of us together and found our arms weren't really long enough to get us all in! You may notice that Gary has kept his beard since the river trip .... we're all thinking he's looking kind of hunky with it .... Ernest Hemingwayesque!

The next morning, Tuesday, May 18, was finally the day Liz and Gary were signed up for the Fiery Furnace tour. They took a disposable camera with them (we still need to get the film developed) as we didn't want to lose the good camera in the tiny, narrow, crawl-space canyons. They call it the Fiery Furnace because when the setting sun shines on these red rocks with their pinnacles and various shades of red, it looks like fiery flames in a furnace.

Since I wasn't doing the Fiery Furnace hike, I did the 3 mile hike over slick rock to Delicate Arch. Actually, I met someone on the trail who had done both hikes, and she said the Delicate Arch was really just as difficult, just not as narrow in some places, and the Fiery Furnace hike is longer. This is certainly the case as it took me about 2 hours to do my hike, and Gary and Lizzie were on theirs for three hours. These pictures show some of the hike up to Delicate Arch over the slick rock, and then below is the arch close up and then from a further away view point I drove to.

After the Delicate Arch hike, I returned to pick up Gary and Liz from the Fiery Furnace. They had had a really good time. We picked up Buster (actually attached the car) at the Visitor Center, and returned to I70 .... on the way to Colorado!

Rocky Mountains, here we come.

Julie, Gary and Liz