It was time to leave the Grand Junction, Colorado area and head west to the national parks and playgrounds of Utah. So we said our goodbyes to our new and old friends in the area, packed up from our summer stay, and took the short move to Moab and Canyonlands National Park area.
Once we got settled at the RV park in Moab, our first foray in the area was to Canyonlands National Park. If you like high (really high!) vistas and observation points with endless views this is the place for you.
Canyonlands is just a vast wilderness of rock in the middle of the Colorado Plateau. Over thousands of years water, wind and gravity carved the once flat land into hundreds of canyons, mesas, buttes, arches and spires. In the middle of all this are the two rivers that did quite a bit of the artwork you see here – the Colorado River and the Green River.
The park is set up into three regions - Island in the Sky, The Needles, and The Maze and each region has to be entered from a different direction – you just can’t drive through the entire park without a major detour. Since we only had a limited time in the area we decided that a day in the Island in the Sky portion of the park was enough for now.
The park was established in 1964 and a large part of it has never seen modern day tourists. It’s so rugged that only the early Indians, river explorers and uranium prospectors ever dared to wander around the seemingly endless canyons.
The mountains you see in the background are the La Sal Mountains which we were told were actually close to a hundred miles away as the crow flies.
We drove from observation point to observation point taking time to enjoy all the views and, of course, to get pictures that we could pass on to you. But as always the pictures just can’t capture the vastness that you experience when your standing near the edge of the cliffs looking out over the canyons. (Like the little guy standing in the upper left hand side there).
In one of the sections we ran into these small potholes that were eroded into the sandstone. We were told there are even little creatures that live in these things and go into hibernation when the water dries up. In parts of the park these potholes went on and on and on.
This is a view of us peeking over the cliff at Shafer’s Road which winds down from one of the observation points to the Colorado River and lower canyons. Steep inclines/descents, very narrow, dirt, no guard rails, and a really long way to the bottom - we did not take the truck on this one!
The next few days were spent around the town of Moab near the RV park we stayed at. For you folks that have never visited Arches or Canyonlands National Parks - Moab, Utah is the little town just down the road. Moab started off as a small Mormon settlement along the Colorado River to grow some grain and minister to the local Indians in the 1860’s. The Indians ran the settlers off after a few years and no settlers came back to the area until the 1880’s and then as the years passed uranium, vanadium and radium (which the Indians were using as body paint – they had rather short lifespans) was discovered in the area. At first this stuff was used primarily for luminous paints and medicines. But then in the 1940s the good old Cold War started up – nuclear weapons became the things to have and Moab became the uranium capital of the world with close to 800 mines in the area producing high grade ore. By the time the lack of demand and federal regulations shut the mines down in the 1970s there was a 16 million ton pile of uranium mine tailings sitting northwest of town. (Rather radioactive stuff!) There are still special trains working on hauling this pile away to a special storage site.
Today, Moab is a huge extreme sports and outdoor enthusiasts sandbox. With rafting in Cardiac Canyon, four wheeling, road and mountain biking, hiking, motorcycling and even some of the up in the air stuff like parasailing, parachuting and hang-gliding. As you can see they even have some geocaching for the milder hobbyists BUT–you have to ride or hike some pretty rough stuff to find them.
Moab is known for its mountain biking and is developing new trails at the rate of 25 miles per year – that alone has attracted over 350,000 mountain bikers in the last year and to think we were two of them!
While we were there I had the opportunity to attend a mountain bike festival with all the greatest and latest goodies and new bikes – all I came away from it with was a new hat (I do love freebies!). Then it was back to town with a promised stop at the local brewery (Linda bribed me!) for a taste of their very fine (and expensive) Strong Scottish Ale. After a day of riding it was very good indeed.
Then the next day it was back on the road again to visit the next National Park on our route – Capitol Reef.
This was the last of the national parks in Utah for us to visit. We have a couple more of the national monuments to visit here but the parks are checked off. We do have a number of areas within the parks to visit or revisit though. So I’m sure we’ll be back.
Capitol Reef National Park is another park that has the extremely rugged red and white rock formations throughout the area. It is at a rather high altitude with the majority of the 70 mile long park at approximately 6,500 ft. (or 1,981 meters). If you do come to visit be sure to take that into account if your going to do some hiking. The air is kinda thin in places!
Near the visitors center in one of the valleys within the park and the area is called “Fruita” where the early pioneers used to grow fruit. They really had to dig deep to come up with that name! But anyway you can still pick and keep the fruit from these orchards when the fruit is in season. (Yes, there is a small fee attached.) It seems that while we were there all the fruit had already been picked and eaten by the European and Oriental tourists – so we settled for an ice cream cone from the concession store.
As we were driving around the park we were at an overlook one day and I ran into a guy from Alabama - t-shirt, shorts, sandals, really white legs, floppy hat, and all red in the face from the exertion and altitude. He seemed rather disgusted that all he could see was rocks, rocks and more rocks and was wondering if I knew of something worth seeing in the park before he and his wife headed out to the other two parks -(which are all rocks) and 200 miles of driving for the day. I wanted to tell him that he should have just looked at the parks on the internet, he would have saved himself a lot of driving, time and would have seen much more that way. I didn’t though, I just smiled and thought “dumbass!” then pointed in the direction of the visitors center.
On one of our stops as we wound our way around the park we ran into these guys just hanging around – just like they have been for hundreds of years.
There is quite the collection of petroglyphs within the park and this is just a small sample.
We took a hike to the Hickman Bridge which is a natural bridge (or arch if you will) back in one of the canyon areas. It’s a pretty rugged hike but the views and interesting formations we found along the way were worth it.
The part of Utah that this park is in was at one time the hideaway of Butch Cassidy and his gang, the Wild Bunch. There are so many canyons and washes that it is easy to see why this gang was so hard to find and why they chose this area.
Our big adventure for Capitol Reef National Park was hiking the Grand Wash through the middle of the park. The hike is about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) one way through an ancient wash with
sheer canyon walls rising up around 200 to 300 feet (60–90 meters) on both sides. In places the wash got quite narrow and the rock formations and different types of erosion really made for an interesting jaunt.
We didn’t make it all the way through the wash – I pooped out on Linda and we decided to turn around. The next day we found out that we were just around the bend and a couple hundred yards from finishing the whole thing when we had decided to turn around. (We had to go back that way anyway to get to the truck.)
One of my big finds along the trail. Kind of like a Jackalberry tree fruit. Or a really big Horse Apple from the Osage Orange tree – only harder!
The next day we were heading out and down the road to St. George for family visits and the dreaded doctor visits for the good old “poke and probe”.
The Wisdom of “Oreo”
Oreo - our 15 year old Tom Cat, has lived and traveled with us for quite a few years. He likes being part of the Blog and will over time provide a few purr-fect bits of wisdom and cats eye view observations for all the blog readers out there as well as a few off-paw comments about the antics of his pride members and life on the road.
A very long time ago (in cat years) my pride and I started full-time RVing. We have run into some rather fun, interesting, unique, and strange things along the way. Some, my pride actively sought out, (why – I don’t know) others we just happened across. Some of the human race considers these pieces of “art” - others are intended to represent the local human or animal culture - or way of life or business. Then there are those where the reasoning just isn’t sound (even for a dog!) and are just plain “odd”. All are intended to catch your eye and your interest.
It’s Halloween! - or close to it anyway. So it’s time for me to tell you a cat ghost story about the Ghosts of The Last Supper. We ran into these guys a couple of years ago as we were headed north. Being a cat, and a rather intelligent one mind you, I’ve always considered suppers as a rather important part of my day. That’s the meal where my pride members pay me my tribute from their table in the form of chicken, fish or other delectable meats. (I do like the Cornish hen.) So when they told me we were going to visit something called The Last Supper it really had me worried! We went to a desert ghost town in the old gold and silver mining area of Nevada called Rhyolite, just northwest of Las Vegas. There a European artist by the name of Albert Szukalski made the figures by wrapping live models in plaster soaked fabric to achieve this rather disturbing scene. It scared this poor old kitty and it will be burned into my little (but highly sophisticated) brain forever. My pride member told me it was probably a rather strange interpretation of some guy named Da Vinci - a masterpiece – like that makes any sense to me!
And there's another Szukalski sculpture made the same year as The Last Supper – a shrouded "Ghost Rider" holding a bicycle. This one kind of fits my male pride member since he really likes his bikes, but he hasn’t learned to keep those round tire things from running over my tail yet. This one wouldn’t have been too bad if my pride member hadn’t started humming the “Riders in the Sky” song after he saw it. He went on for a day and a half! Wow! - that was irritating. That’s about it from me for now – time for my kitty snack and a good afternoon nap.
Oreo
That’s it for now, we have finished all of the doc poke and probe appointments and we both came out squeaky clean, so to speak. So we are good until the next time. We will be heading down to the Salton Sea area next week (our winter home this season) and having a little fun along the way.
Home is where we park it!
Lee & Linda
