Road Trip: Southwest

Day 10: Thursday, May 01, 2025 - Canyonlands NP, UT, and Arches NP, UT

Day's statistics:
Weather: mid 70s
Steps: Steve 18,280; Linda 14,186
Travel: 264 miles

The hotel had what looked like a restaurant where breakfast was served - rather than just a space as this room had its own doors with table seating.
I'm not sure why - probably because of the number of people about, but I didn't get a picture of the breakfast area. Or the fact that I was distracted by an annoyance: they had no milk. How could an establishment that serves breakfast run out of milk???
Anyway, that meant no cereal. And flavored creamers for coffee. Not a huge deal for us, but I am sure there were some families that this would really negatively impact.
Linda had toast with peanut butter and jelly, and I had a waffle.

Today was another day - and the last - of visiting two NPs.
First up was Canyonlands, about an hour away from Green River.
We had to get there first, and continued to see remarkable sights on the way - though not many as it was so close.










We eventually arrived at a mesa pullout.
While this wasn't part of the actual park, there was a placard with information as if it were.
The mesa, this one a stone topped one, had little divots in it called potholes.




We headed on toward the park.
It is difficult to tell from this shot, but on the other side of this field was a canyon. There is a strong possibility that it is better accessed from the Dead Horse Point State Park. Plus, the southernmost point (on the left of the image as we too were traveling south) is actually Dead Horse Point Overlook.

The park entrance finally arrived. Though since it is stationary, I guess we arrived at the entrance...

A few more views before arriving at the VC.


We arrived at the VC and acquired our stamp - the 7^th NP stamp on this trip.

We also picked up a map to decide where we wanted to go and what we wanted to see.
In the VC was also a 3D map of the park.

The park has three primary units, though they call them "Districts" at this park: Island in the Sky, The Maze, and The Needles.
While we have visited more than one unit at an NP - Theodore Roosevelt last year, and Saguaro during this trip, we were primarily going to stick with just the Island in the Sky.
Bathrooms aren't something that is photographed much. And that still applies, but I had to take a picture of the outside of these because it demonstrates the intent to try to address the environmental impacts of bathrooms. The wheelchair-accessible side was a traditional toilet, but there is also just a hole in the floor that goes to a septic... hole in the ground.
It was surprising that even with the open hole, it didn't smell that horrible in the restroom (I am not saying that I'd like to have that smell in our house, but just that it wasn't that bad).
The door locks also had a "Vacant" / "Occupied" marker so people would know.

There were a number of pullouts and overlooks along the way into the park.
We stopped at the first, and also took a selfie.


We continued on.


The Mesa Arch was the first stop we made where we got out. We walked on the trail a little - a couple hundred yards - but there was a fair amount of sand, and the terrain was uneven, and up an incline.

We got to the top of a hill, and Linda stopped and waited for me to go to the arch and back.

When I got to the arch, a couple had just taken a couple selfies. While the husband was reviewing the photos on his device, the wife said "Let's go over there." recognizing they were standing in a prime spot and pointing to the side to get out of the way. That was nice.
I took a couple shots and then headed back up the hill.





On the way back to the car, we took another selfie.

The next stop was Black Canyon Overlook.










Our last stop was Grand View Point.



This was yet another impressive park. But alas, we had to head out - not because we didn't like the park, but rather because we had to get to lunch because we had a time stamped entry to Arches - the only park we needed to get a time stamped entry.







A landscape pan of this park is included in this video

By right about noon we were on our way out of the park. The line coming in was much longer now than it was when we arrived.

Even though Arches NP was, like, "across the street" - OK, it was 6.5 miles from Canyonlands, but when you consider that we've driven further than that from the entrance booth to the VC in some parks, this was really close - we had to drive fifteen or so minutes out of the way to Moab - the nearest populated ares - in order to get lunch.
Like the other parks, there really isn't much outside the immediate vacinity of the park, other than perhaps some interesting sights.







At the end of the road, we turned right onto the highway to head toward Moab.
There was, let's call it, a dinosaur park at the intersection. There are six visible in the pictures, but there were a few more visible as we passed by.

A few more miles down the road and we were in the town of Moab. It wasn't a big town, but it did have more than one traffic light. And probably more than one horse. It certainly had a LOT of off-road ATV vehicles with three being in the parking lot of the diner.
The diner, incidentally, was the Moab Diner.





Linda had the Chicken Fajita "Taco" Salad, and I had the Kokopelli Chicken sandwich.

After lunch, we had about a 15 minute drive back north to get to Arches NP.
On the way, we stopped by the post office to mail some postcards.
After turning off the main road, we were on the short entrance road to the park entrance.

There were a few cars off to the side of this entrance road, and I can only assume they were early for their entrance. We had a one hour window of 2:00 - 3:00 for entry. Though we were on line at 1:30, by the time we were at the booth it was about ten before the hour. The ranger was OK with our slightly early arrival, though I did ask what would happen if we didn't have a ticket. She said we'd have to leave and get one.
Good thing we had a ticket.
After passing through, the VC was a short distance ahead on the right.

We arrived at the VC and acquired our stamp - the 8^th NP stamp on this trip.

We also picked up a map to decide where we wanted to go and what we wanted to see. (yes, I copy-pasted this text.)
We began our drive, which started up a hill.
There were some interesting views driving through (presented in order as best I could) the park but they weren't, you know, arches - that IS the name of the park.






The first stop was at the La Sal Mountains Viewpoint.



Then was the Three Gossips.

Followed by the Courthouse.

Next was the Tower of Babel.



But... we still haven't seen any arches.




Are we ever going to see - <gasp!> is that an arch?!!? YES! Finally.

This was the arch in a formation called Garden of Eden (or maybe it was Elephant Butte).
And then on the other side were the North (not as obvious as the South) and South Windows, and the Turret Arch, (on the right), and more topography on the left.



There was a small - but packed - parking lot at this pullout. We stopped, got out and made our way toward the South Window, seeing them all from a couple different angles and distances, as well as a little bit of the flora. We took a selfie at the first decent opportunity we had.



One of us thought it might be a good idea to trek all the way up to the arch to get up close and personal. And the other didn't disagree either...
The people standing in the arch give a perspective to how tall it actually is.





I saw the view through the window - get it?!!? - too.


Then I headed back down.

At the bottom was a placard with some info on it, as well as this fashion photo I was asked to take.


As we made our way back to the car, we saw the formation over there.
It seemed a little too far for us to walk, having spent quite some time today already walking / hiking. Plus we weren't done in this park yet either.

The one arch in the middle was probably a little taller than the South Window arch.

There is actcually a person standing in the arch that I highlighted for emphasis (and from this angle, the thin crack in the arch can also be seen).

Eventually we climbed back into the car and headed to the next stop: Delicate Arch Overlook.







Delicate Arch had a parking lot with a one-mile each way hike to go to the arch.
However, we went to an overlook available instead.
The first image (without a significant crop) is with the regular lens, the second with the larger lens.
Once again there is a person in the arch giving perspective - though I'm not highlighting them like I did above.


Before leaving this area, I was again asked to take not one, but two fashion photos.


It was time to go to the next stop, and our last of the park: Devil's Garden, all the way at the far end of the park.






Devil's Garden has a trail that covers a full 7.8 miles. We weren't going to do that.
We were walking to Landscape Arch, which was 1.9 miles round-trip - still a decent hike.
There were interesting sights in this area as well as, of course, arches. After parking, we started our hike.


This might be Navajo Arch or Partition Arch.

The pièce de résistance is the Landscape Arch - the longest natural arch in the U.S. at 306 feet in length per the NPS. (Incidentally, there IS a difference between a bridge and an arch.)
It also looks like Partition Arch or Navajo Arch (which ever isn't above) is in the background too.

We found a decent vantage point and took a selfie with the Landscape Arch in the background.

After the selfie, we headed back.











On the way back, when we got to a t-intersection in the path, I veered off down the hill to get a view of Tunnel Arch. No, that isn't me in the blue shorts at the bottom of the slope, but I turned right where the person in the shorts is.

I took some pictures of the Tunnel Arch and the area, then I started the trek to Pine Tree Arch. Since the path "went that way" and I could not see where it terminated, I stopped after going a few hundred yards, and headed back.






After rejoining Linda at the fork in the road, we again headed toward the parking lot.




We began our long exit drive from the furthest parking lot in the park.




The Balanced Rock parking lot was full when we passed it going into the park, so we stopped by now on the way out when there were only a couple cars in the small parking lot.
The first image is from Linda that she took on the way past, when the sun was also high in the sky.



It was time to head out.
The sun was no longer overhead as much, and now the light either highlighted or shadowed more of the formations.
On the way, we also got one last view of the La Sal Mountains.





We took the long drive all the way back down the mountain. When we got back to the VC, it was already closed.



After turning left onto the highway, we headed back toward, and then through the town of Moab.
We either saw a sign or the GPS pointed to something that might have been of interest in this area. We did a u-turn after the far side of the bridge over the Colorado River, came back, and turned right. It wound up being a small parking lot with a boat launch. We didn't even stop the car, we just turned around in the parking lot, and left.
Considering where we were, and what time it was, we decided to stop at a market to get a salad for dinner. We wound up with a chicken Casaer salad, and some bread (not pictured).
We sat in the car and ate because the hotel was over an hour away and that would have been way too late to eat dinner. We had some water with the dinner which is when we realized we needed to get more water.
After eating, I went back in and bought to more six packs of water.
The store didn't sell wine, so we stopped at a nearby store for a bottle. We had a nice chat with the proprietor and even shared a black forrest cake martini recipe with him.
Fifteen or so miles outside the town of Moab was this marker. No, that is NOT text I added to the photo. That's how it looks. I guess they just want to try to make sure tourists don' miss it...
Having just seen a number of holes in rocks a couple hours earlier, we didn't even consider stopping. Or even slowing down.

Not far from our day's final destination we passed a sign for Canyonlands' The Needles.
It was an hour round-trip to the overlook - and though we didn't know that at the time, there was a really high probability that it would have been too dark by the time we got to the overloook. It was also a rather long day already and probably in our better interest to forego the view.

The hotel was about an hour and a half away from the town of Moab. It was starting to get darker, and the sights were lessening.

But eventually we arrived in Blanding, and stopped at a Maverik gas station to fill up.
Once again, there was a plethora or gas varieties available.

There was a parking spot in front of the office that we utilized. I went in and checked in.
Our room was a couple doors down, but for convenience of luggage, I moved the car closer to the room.
We went in.

After some wine, pinnocle, and relaxing, we washed up and went to bed.

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