I have not even found half of my pictures but I think I found enough to give you a feel of my trip. Fingers crossed!
I have no clue why I decided to do this trip…likely a commercial I saw on TV but once I decided to do it I spent days plotting and planning where I would like to stay, what I would like to see, what I might like to do on my own and what I might want to do as a tour. Busy, busy…my flight was fairly early in the morning because I didn’t want to be driving around at night…I got really lost…I was driving around at night. 🙂
I mentioned in a previous post that I like to take pictures of out the plane window…I almost always go for a window seat. The aerials over this part of the country were spectacular. Though I had flown over this area before I never really paid attention because it was not my destination. The sun was rising as I was leaving Logan so I included a few of those and I think I showed great restraint…I have 94 pictures and I am only posting 24. 🙂
Once I got my rental…a black Jeep Wrangler…it was suggested if I was going to be driving around the Moab/Arizona terrain…I was on the road to find my hotel in Moab. I must have driven up and down one section of the highway 5 times because Waze kept telling me to take an exit that wasn’t there! A 3.5 hour drive took almost 7 hours. I am directionally challenged…I acknowledge that…but this was ridiculous! Scenery though was spectacular and after several calls to the hotel I did eventually find my way. It was a little late to get anything to eat though….I had to settle for walking across the street to a convenience store to get snacks. From flying into sunrise to driving into the sunset it was a very full day.
I slept in the next morning because all I had on my agenda was to tour the town on my own and get my bearings for the tours I had planned the next two days. Kind of mind boggling that the residents here get to see this all the time! I get to see mostly maple trees and residential neighborhoods when I go out. The lady at the bottom in the fur coat…no idea why she had it on…it was March but it was unusually warm and they were taking bikes out of the car…I didn’t stick around to see if they got on those bikes and rode off. I just came here to make sure I knew where I was going for the tours. Hmm…
The first tour I did was at Arches National Park….I remember it was a beautiful day with amazing things to see but I couldn’t find any of those pictures because I could not remember the name of the place I went…once I started typing this I remembered and was able to find the pictures! The woman who gave the tour was very nice and her husband was the one that did the Canyonland tour I took the next day. I believe this husband & wife team worked for Navtec Expeditions. Sadly, all of the Arches & Canyonland pictures are in the same folder and I can not distinguish which is which and there is nothing there that I specifically remember being Arch-like…I may have put the name on the old folder in error? The Arches would have been on the 26th and Canyonland on the 27th but everything is dated the 26th…hmm! Anyway…I went on both and will post the best of what I saw…there are over 400 pictures just inside the parks…I will not be posting 400 pictures!
The first stop on the way was Utah Highway 279 Rock Art Site where we got out and got to observe a lot of petroglyphs up close and personal. It is kind of cool to think that we were standing in the same spots as those ancestors hundreds of years ago…of course, there was no road there at the time!
Now…images taken as we were driving there…it’s weird saying that since I have to combine both days here.
Time to enter the park(s)…I did not realize you can camp in here but you can…there is one place in Arches that you can reserve, Devil’s Garden Campground, and two in Canyonland, one at the Needles which can be reserved and the second at Island in the Sky which is first come, first served. A lot of the rock formations here have names but I don’t remember most of them though I do see faces of people and animals in a lot of them. I will be posting some pictures of Island in the Sky soon but let me tell you…the road up there is very long, winding and narrow and at some points very steep!
There is an image below of me if you are curious…I took it when looking in the side view mirror of our vehicle. There is also an image of a red truck on the side of the road and two people across from it. They were setting up a very large drone! The guide said if they were caught they would be asked to leave but if they were setting up to take pictures…I would love to see those! There is also an image below of a large rock…I think it kind of looks like the profile of Trump!
I held these out separate to explain…the first two images to the left are, according to the guide, the bones of dinosaurs from prehistoric times, the second image is said to look like the Virgin Mary...I agree, and the last few images are at Lathrop Canyon. There is a rock formation called the Washer Woman and I do have it….it might already be posted above but I couldn’t find it when I was posting these images.
I should mention that the bones noted above were seen at a stop on the road to Island in the Sky. We are not there yet but I will post those. First, a stop at a spot that the guide said had fossilized bones and prints from prehistoric birds.
Next up…Musselman Arch. Technically it’s a bridge (and was known as “Little Bridge” in the past), its popular name today is after a local resident well-known for exploring the region around the bridge. It’s five feet thick, six feet wide, 187 feet long (as measured on Google Earth®)–and 300 feet down! I did not walk across it…5′ thick is not quite thick enough for me! I do wish I had though…I would have been able to get it from different angles.
Now it is time to head to Island in the Sky…I hope the images I found do it justice!! Can you believe how long, narrow, winding and edge of the cliff that road is? I was in the front passenger seat and it wasn’t too bad going up but coming down!!! I had my eyes closed a good deal of the time but clearly opened them often enough to get shots of what was around us!
Before posting pictures of our drive back to Moab, I just want to post a few more miscellaneous from inside of the park as we were heading out.
Time to head back to Moab and call it a day.
A down day is coming up before I head toward Arizona. Be sure to come back for the journey!
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See you on the road!
Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colours. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving. – Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky
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