Into The Heart of Canyonlands National Park

I'm always sorry to see Moab in the rear view mirror, but I was looking forward to getting to the Needles district of Canyonlands. After a beautiful drive very early on Monday morning we were lucky to get what may be the best campsite in the park. There are only about 25 sites and they are well dispersed so you really feel like you have the whole world to yourself. That afternoon, we hiked all of the “short “ trails, finishing with the Slickrock trail, that even though it was only two and one half miles long, in the heat it felt much longer. Of course the sunset was epic. In the morning I took off with my bike intending to see how far I could get up the Elephant Hill trail towards the confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers. This is a twenty mile round trip trail with a one mile foot hike from the end of the four wheel drive road to the confluence. Elephant Hill is a legendary four wheel drive trail that is very steep and rocky and generally requires a modified short wheel base jeep to make the climb (and descent). It's much easier on a mountain bike. I kept going and despite some deep sand, I make it to the confluence. I think that it's cool that the only way to actually see it is to walk ten miles, bike 21 miles or do an extreme jeep road with a foot hike at the end. Even though this is near the high season, I was surprised to encounter only two other bikers who had made it half way and were turning around. I drank three liters of water on the ride and spent the rest of the afternoon re-hydrating and chill'n in the shade. The next morning we spent a frustrating hour replacing a bolt and nut on my truck's suspension that had dropped out from all the rough roads we had done and repressurizing the airbags. I have forgotten to bring any socket wrenches so I was trying to tighten the nut with two crappy crescent wrench a millimeter at a time. At least I had packed some spair bolts. We finally left the beautiful Squaw Flats campsite and headed out of the park and stopped at the famous Newspaper Rock which is an amazing collection of petroglyphs that date back several thousand years. We were back on the pavement leave the Morman homeland and humming our way towards the land of beer, Cortez Colorado.

At our Moab Base.

We got a campsite at an RV park for three nights to allow us to explore the Moab area. What luxury! Electricity, water, a laundry and WiFi! We ate the first meal not cooked in the camper on this trip at the Moab Brewery. Moab is all about the outdoors. Mountain and road biking, rock climbing, rafting on the Colorado River and all manner of off-road vehicle activity. It's turned into a tourist town over the years, but still has a funky vibe. We went up to Dead Horse Point State Park where I got to ride their complete system of mountain bike trails. These trails were relatively easy, mostly on slick rock and sand with some technical sections. While I rode, Debbie hiked some five miles out to the spectacular point which over looks the Colorado River and took some great photos. We then went into the Island In The Sky portion of Canyonland National Park where the park service is celebrating the 50 th anniversary of the park. Today Debbie did laundry and then rode her folding bike into town to do some shopping. I rode my bike up the nine mile bike path out of town, (Moab has a great bike path system that connects all of the major trail heads. ) I got to the Bar M trail head and rode Deadman's Ridge, a trail rated as expert, back down to Moab. After two days of intense biking, I was wiped out and spent the rest of the afternoon lying around and typing this blog. Tomorrow, after dumping the tanks and filling up with food and water, we plan to go to the Needles District of Canyonlands and with luck hopefully snag a campsite for a few days.

Time To Head For The Desert.

After surviving the buffalo migration through our campsite at the Great Salt Lake, we decided that the rain monsoons and flash flood were over in southern Utah. We spent the night at Green River State Park which is a veritable oasis on the way to Moab. The little town , however, looks like it has seen better days. We took a detour up a dirt road to some obscure Native American rock art. Further down the road we entered Moab Canyon and arrived at Arches National Park. This is one of the most popular parks in the country and is jammed with people from April through October. It was real work to find a parking place at any of the trail heads or points of interest. The small campground is always full with reservations booking months in advance. This is my fifth visit to the park and it is no wonder that it is so popular. The hundreds of natural stone arches and crazy science fiction landscape always astonishes me. The first time that I went to the park was in 1970 after reading Edward Abbey's masterpiece “Desert Solitaire”. At that time all of the roads were dirt, we had the campground to ourselves and we could do technical climbs on the arches. Now there are hordes of people everywhere. When I go on a trail in any of our wonderful parks, but especially in Arches, I am struck and saddened by the fact that most of the people that you see in the back country are foreign visitors, especially German, French, Japanese and always French Canadians. I guess that many Americans are just too fat and lazy to get out of their cars.