Utah, National Parks and Trekking part 2

Once again, we were reluctant to move on from our friendly camping area in Capital Reef NP, but there is more to see.

The drive up to Canyonlands NP is pretty long so we planned to camp somewhere along the way.  We drove east from Captital Reef to Hanksville where we fueled up and noticed, much to our surprise, a lot of boats.  Needless to say we asked why there are all these boats parked out in the middle of the desert.  It is only an hour from Hanksville to Lake Powell, so this is where many people keep their boats.

Next along the way we drove through a small section of the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, over a bridge crossing a narrow section of Lake Powell and then on to the Natural Bridges National Monument.  We caught up with our Canadian friends here and went around the park to check out the Natural Bridges.  This was the cold day when Bryce Canyon was due to receive 9 inches of snow and none of us were particularily inspired to do much hiking.

We camped just north of Monticello and got an early start to arrive at Canyonlands early to secure our camp site.  On the drive into Canyonlands there is a place called Newspaper Rock.  We had no idea what it was and stopped to take a look, and it is a rock where people have inscribed hieroglyphics and pictographs for over 2000 years. 

We went to "The Needles"section of the park which is south of the confluence of the Colorado and Green Rivers.  It was an exellent place to be.  The campground is nestled amidst big rock formations and there were numerous hiking trails all in our camping area. 

Hiking here was really fun and interesting.  The formations were great and we hiked in and out of canyons, clambered up and over all the slickrock forms and squeezed between huge rocks.  The formation below is huge and we had to cross it to get to the next canyon and while up there, it was snowing.

 Check out the lunch spot we found one day.  In the photo above Chris is standing in a rock hollow.  Both of them climbed up there and had lunch in the sun with a view.

 The trails are marked with these little piles of rocks (cairns).  It seems to work here, but I wonder if it would work as well in Australia with all the larrikins making rock piles where they shouldn't be.

Sometimes we found barely a shoulder width separating two rocks, and here is a narrow set or stairs.

 One thing was certain, there was spectacular scenery around every corner and we could have stayed at Canyonlands longer.  The good news is that there is another part of Canyonlands to the north that we will visit after the Arches NP.

Our next park was Arches NP.  This is another popular park and normally it would not be possible to get a camp site without a reservation, but we sort of lucked into a place so we stayed here one night.  The campground had the most magnificent view...there were the rock formations nearby in the park, and in the distance were the La Sal mountains.  Nice. 

Below is the landscape arch.  Years ago visitors were allowed to go right up under the arch, however one day a big chunk of it fell...tons of rock, this is a very large structure.  Now the tourists are all kept a little distance away.  There are signs in the park that read  "If you hear loud crackind noises, step away from the arch".  Good advice.



There are over 2500 natural arches in this park.  Phil and Chris saw a good number of them.

 I was able to visit one near the camp site.

We returned to Moab after our visit to Arches NP and will head to the Northern section of Canyonlands next.  We are a little uncertain of where we'll go after that, but hopefully we'll get to an internet location again and keep you all informed of our adventures.