At the top, you are on a large mesa, and the road continues to the north to UT-95. Not far to the west is located Natural Bridges National Park. It was getting later in the afternoon but we decided to visit anyway, figuring the worst that could happen was that we were turned away by the rangers. The Rangers were locking up the visitor centre just as we got there and didn't say anything about not being able to continue. There were a few other people still looking, and we're glad we didn't just head to Blanding. The natural bridges are located below you in the river-beds. There are hiking trails to each, but they require fitness and desire - things that have been lacking in us for some time. We had to be satisfied with photos from the viewing areas. We left a bit before sunset driving east along UT-95. The road was fairly easy and provided great views. We arrived at Blanding an hour later, a bit after dark. Blanding turned out to be a little smaller than we anticipated, but proved to be a great place to stop after what had been a pretty 'big' day (2 x NPs, 2 x Navajo Nation Parks, 1 x State Park, a Dugway and around 350 miles) Phew! We slept well.
Thanks tom124. You can advise Larry that I'm abour 6' 5" and 280lbs, and will be wearing my 7 week holiday beard (white-ish) and Mrs DB (***uming she comes along) is 6' tall with blond hair). I'll keep a look out for Larry, but I'll quite likely forget to remind him about the donuts (just 'cause I can be kinda forgetful about that sort of stuff). Thanks.
Day 44 - Blanding UT to Green River UT We again left a bit early (for us) to give us as much time as we could in the National Parks further north. Before Moab, just beside US-191 is Wilson's Arch. The city of Moab was much much bigger than we expected, (That's it, nothing much to say other than that) I had expected it to be around the same size as Blanding, but was probably 10 times the population. The entry to Arches National Park is just a couple of miles north of Moab, and the traffic to enter the park was backed up about 20 cars when we got there. The road into the National Park rose quickly up through an opening in the cliff wall to reveal a reasonably open valley behind filled with (well, what would you expect(?)) lots and lots of eroded rocks. Of all shapes and sizes. Here's some. and
So many rocks All interesting, all different shapes. Even some arches, which I guess you would expect in a National Park called Arches - huh? Seriously, the appearances of the rocks are all interesting, and we took dozens and dozens of photos. When you're there, it's really great, but trying to cut all the photos down to a manageable handful ends up with quite a few looking alike.
Balancing rocks More arches As you can see, some of them are very large When we left, the crowd at the entry was even longer, more than double what it was a few hours earlier
From Arches, we headed for Canyonlands National Park. There are two entries to Canyonlands - the southern one is to an area called The Needles and the northern one is to Island In The Sky. The brief investigations I did before we got there suggested that if you only had time to do one, that Island In The Sky was the better, so that's the one we visited. The views were spectacular. It showed what the Grand Canyon (the real one in Az) must have looked like millions of years ago before it got to its current appearance. Island In The Sky proved to be a mesa that led towards the point where the Colorado River and the Green River converge. Below is a lower rim level, about 1400 ft down from the mesa top and running through that lower level is the two rivers, carving more canyons. The rain that falls on the mesa erodes the edges into canyons where the water flows collect together, and these in turn create canyons in the lower rim level. The mesa on top is fairly flat and provides grazing for deer, bison, etc, and until it became a National Park, cattle.
This view is towards the WSW over the Green River. The rim level below is quite flat on top The rim gets eaten away by erosion caused by water run-off eating away the soft rocks below the rim level and then the rim cap-rock drops into the canyon below, extending the canyons backwards. You can see the effect and the cause (the dry stream beds leading down to the head of the canyon) in the photo above.
The Green River creates a green pathway through the arid surrounds, draining water from Wyoming and northern Utah. You can see the canyons independently formed away from the river in the pic above. Further downstream along the Green River, you can see the canyons leading to the valley created by the river. The scale of the formations is astounding - covering hundreds and hundreds of square miles
The eastern side cliffs of the mesa above the rim. There is a road down to the rim level, which was put in by mineral explorers before the park was declared in the 1960s. Intrepid (there's that word that rhymes with stupid again) mountain bike riders ride down the road to ride along a 112 mile road around the rim of Islands In The Sky over a couple of days - good for them, I say. Apparently it's some world-famous and is much respected by mountain bikers. Again, good for them. We found that with the earlier start to the day, we probably could have gone to see the Needles in Canyonlands. We had time to sit and gaze out from Island In The Sky at the view and contemplate how small we all are. While we sat and looked around, we noted a few Ravens (or Crows) that were gliding on the updrafts created by the wind and sun. They were able to just hover in the air. You could see they were having a wonderful time, zooming around where they liked. They rode the updraft up probably another thousand feet above our heads and them dive off to wherever they wanted. It was very nice to have a little bit of time and to not be in such a rush. (I recommend it to anyone). Anyway, we headed into Green River a bit earlier than normal and decided to find a bar for a couple of drinks, which led to dinner, then bed. Internet from Pueblo to Cedar City was a headache. The motels we stayed in all advertised internet - they lied.
Day 45 - Green River UT to Cedar City UT After the clear sunshine of the day before, waking up to grey raining skies came as a bit of a surprise. Sure, it cleaned the outside of the car a bit - after a bit over 12000 miles up to that point, it was suffering from hitting too many bugs, collecting too much dust and road grime. It was more than a week since we'd driven through any rain worth the description. Do I care how dirty the renter is though? Nah, that'd be crazy! It's a renter FFS. 'Main Street in Green River - not a lot of people live in Green River - it's on I-70 and pretty much provides fuel, accommodation and some food to travellers. No industry apparent, other than road repairs to the highways p***ing through. Don't get me wrong, it looked like a nice enough sort of place, and the bar we visited the day before was friendly and full of happy people. We filled up at a service station, just as a Greyhound Bus pulled up, disgorging its human cargo who proceeded to scavenge the hot fried food bar for brekky. I counted my lucky stars for being fortunate enough to have made enough good decisions in life to have an 8 week holiday rather than s****ing together enough money to ride a bus across the US on I-70. Lucky me, unlucky them. A few miles west along I-70 to the turn-off to UT-24. Heading down UT-24, the sky looked like we would be in for some weather
The sky proved us right - a decent rain fell as we headed towards Capitol Reef National Park. You get to drive perpendicular to the length of the reef, virtually going backwards in time as the strata have eroded away. The Fremont River, which runs through the area, was bubbling away with the rain run-off. The colour of the water shows how easily the rock erodes and is carried away (making me wonder how long it will take for Lake Powell to fill in from all the sediment carried down from upstream. When you get to the visitor centre, just over the road and across the river are ancient petroglyphs - rock-carvings done hundreds or thousands of years ago. ............ and no, I do not believe they are pictures of aliens, Really, I don't! ................................................ mind you, ............................................ (Hmmmmmmm?)
From the visitor centre, there's a scenic drive that heads south along the west face of the reef. A mile or so along, there's an old Mormon home which acts as a bakery and country-goods store. Their speciality is pies. The NP visitor centre even recommends them - I'm sure there's a symbiotic relationship there, with pies for contra-promotion, but heck, this is the US (and who cares). The pies look awesome. If you visit, buy yourself one (or some). They're a bit spendy, but each looks big enough to be a desert for a few people. Yum. The washways were awash with rain run-off - about a dozen along the way, with lots of sediment washed onto them. The water was only a few inches deep though, so there was no risk as we drove across. We didn't fear for flash floods across the road, but the rangers were warning people not to enter the narrow gorges as there was definitely a risk of the runoffs joining together and creating dangerous conditions in the gorges. One of the more unusual single rocks we have seen in all of the places we have visited was this one It was shaped like a snake's head with the mouth open and fangs hanging down. It was really weird. After we returned to the visitor centre from the scenic drive, we continued along UT-24 to the UT-12. Along the way, we saw a number of small volume waterfalls from on top of the sheer rock walls. We considered ourselves very lucky to see this kind of thing when the usual condition is parched arid dryness.
Have enjoyed following along- we've done much the same trip- maybe from different directions at times or not all at once- everyone's interests are different so have enjoyed seeing points of interest to you that we didn't go to- it's been fun-
Heading down the UT-12, we headed into the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Park. The road was good and we ended up driving along a mesa which ended in a ridge with steep drops either side of the unprotected roadsides before dropping down to the bottom of the river valley/canyon. The ridge wasn't very long but it felt like driving along in a video game for the short length of it. Awesome bit of road. You could look along canyons almost eye-to-eye.
Thanks 2bubbas, I'm glad you have enjoyed it, and I feel lucky that Ryan has provided this forum to allow me to give my impressions of the places we have visited, and share them with so many people. Cheers.
Just outside of Boulder, the road runs right alongside the river. Then rises again on the way to Escalante The road had to be carved through in the 1930's, using tons and tons of dynamite to create a path through. So many different looking rocks.
After Grand Staircase-Escalante, it was on to Bryce Canyon - one of the jewels in the crown of the National Park Service. And with very good reason. Bryce Canyon itself is just out of this world Hoodoos, hoodoos, everywhere. Good for nothing but looking at. But hell, are they great to look at. Again, when you're up at 8 - 9000 feet, and there's quite a heavy cloud base, it's not too hard to imagine the views getting clouded in. We drove all round the park and stopped at all the viewpoints. Some provided great vistas, many were closed in as the clouds scudded past. This one was a lonely looking hoodoo
They even have their own arch, or natural bridge or window, whatever they want to call it. Another view of Bryce Canyon, this time looking down the valley.
From Bryce Canyon, we took the shorter, more scenic drive via UT-14 towards Cedar City, where we would be staying for the night. The road wound up through the mountains to 9900 ft. Plenty of warning signs advised trucks not to use the road, and it was easy to see why. The bends were fairly tight and the slope was fairly steep. The views (except when we were in cloud) made it worth it. We watched the outside temp drop as we rose. At Duck Creek Village, the outside temp was still a bit above freezing, but a thin carpet of snow lay on the ground and on a couple of roofs on buildings. I expect the snow wouldn't last long, but it was still snow. Further up the mountain, a lake had been formed by a lava release. Navajo Lake The drive down the mountain proved to be very 'interesting'. The road was quite steep, much steeper than the east side, but was well made and well sign-posted. Staying in a low gear meant we didn't have to ride the brakes and we were down without any real concern. As you might expect, the scenery along the way was awesome. Cedar City sits right on I-15 and is quite a large city. It looks like a nice place to live.
The looping video at Ruby's Inn (at entrance to Bryce Canyon) tells of the family who homesteaded that property and lived there for several years before being asked what they thought of "the big hole" right over there. They had not seen it. Now they own the closest lodging to what has been deemed by local ranchers as a "terrible place to lose a cow". I'd have to agree.
Day 46 - Cedar City UT to Las Vegas NV It's a relatively short drive to Las Vegas, so we weren't in a rush first thing. Mrs DB checked out the local nic-nack stores along Main Street before we jumped onto I-15 to head towards Zion National Park. One thing of note in Cedar City is that it appears the council or highways department or whoever have finally seen the light and decided to start changing the US from the right side of the road to the correct side of the road OK, the extent of driving on the correct side of the road is pretty limited, but you already have your post vans in RHD, now you have a road to drive them on!!!! Who knows what might become of you - next, you'll be putting sliced beetroot on your hamburgers! Not far down I-15 is a sign saying to take the off-ramp to Zion. Thinking it was another scenic route to Zion, we jumped off. It turned out it was the entry into a second portion of Zion - the Kolob Canyons.
As you say, everything at the entry to Bryce is named Ruby's Inn - everything, and if you lost a cow down there, it wouldn't be coming back any time soon. Cheers.
More Kolob Canyon, looking south towards the 'main part' of Zion looking towards the N-W and who said nature doesn't have a humourous side - how else could you explain this huge ****? Beaut ****. not ****e
Back out and onto I-15, we headed down to the 'proper' part of Zion Even the road in was spectacular. The low-lying cloud was still blocking the views of the tops of the higher peaks. The sheer rock walls dwarfed everything in the valleys
One of the iconic images of Zion National Park is of the archway formation at the eastern end of the canyon off the Virgin River near the long tunnel to the eastern side of the park P***ing through the tunnel brings you to a slightly more open region of the park, bringing you up close to the weathered rock rather than the enormous cliff faces of the western side The rocks above are testament to how plastic the rocks are in folding and layering and the erosion of some portions before the laying down of more strata of sediment to become new rock. The pic below shows thousands of very thin layers that have eroded away, providing toe-holds for small hardy shrubs.
Thanks Scott. It seems like ages since we met you in Kalispell - geez, we've seen some stuff in the weeks since. Take care.
The vertical cracks in the rock face are unusual I have no idea what caused them. Oh yeah, the buses, like you see in the pic above, are just an absolute pain in the ****. The pics for the past few days have been very 'grey' due to the heavy cloud cover killing all the colour. I stole the following pic to paste here from Wiki, just to brighten up the posts Not my photo - in fact, it looks touched up to me - ah well, at least it's brighter. On the way out of Zion, we took a pic of what looks to me to be the ultimate optimist's home. This person is living at the bottom of a cliff whch has provided lots of very large decorative rocks for his garden. He has at least taken the measure of having a protective tarp fitted at the back - maybe to 'bounce' the rocks back away. The rocks in his garden are huge - 10 - 15' diameter, suggesting that is the size rocks the cliff 'calves'. In my opinion, this dude is a headline waiting to happen.
From Zion, it was back to I-15 for a jaunt down south. Just past St George in the extreme SW of Utah, I-15 drops elevation dramatically through canyons or gorges, dropping a few thousand feet in just a few miles. The semis take it cautiously, which is good for everyone. Further along the freeway are dotted Joshua Trees
We had plenty of time, so we decided to take a detour to look at the Nevada State Park called Valley of Fire. The name is coined because of the red colour of the rocky outcrops. The rocks appear to be very soft This photo shows the many holes created in the faces of the rocks. Without too much imagination, the rocks appear to have faces of a ghoulish nature. There is a scenic drive in the park, taking you westwards through the strata The further along the path, the lighter the colours of the rocky outcrops.
The Jalopy Journal
