Goosenecks State Park

This was a really small park, but what a view! The river has cut an "entrenched meander" down through the rock layers. The park is three miles wide, but the river travels seven miles across it. I couldn't get it all in one photo, I had to stitch three together.

We were camped right by the edge.

On the way in, near the town of Mexican Hat, we passed the Mexican Hat rock.

Monument Valley

I've already written about monument valley, so here are a few pictures.

Dawn

Our campground was overseen by a couple of horses and a raven.

Heading north

We had a wonderful week and a half in the Canyonlands/Arches/Moab area of Utah. The southern Needles section of Canyonlands and Arches are tied for our second favorite spot of the trip (after Bryce Canyon). Arches, like the other "big name" parks was a mob scene of tourists behaving badly, but like the others, it only takes walking a very short distance off the beaten path to have quiet, beautiful, desert scenes. We had some fantastic hikes, some short, some all day and fairly challenging, with scrambling over rocks. The most exciting moment for me was spotting mountain lion tracks! I showed my picture of them to a ranger, who confirmed them, and added that we had been in their known range, and that the tracks looked fresh - they had probably been made the night before. Another ranger said from the size of the tracks, it was probably a big male.

We got into Colorado National Monument yesterday evening. It was a spectacular steep drive up to a high overlook of the Colorado River valley just to get to the campground. Today we will drive the rest of the scenic route on our way towards Dinosaur National Monument tomorrow.

With a nickle and penny for scale.

Zion National Park

Checkerboard mesa

After Bryce Canyon, we were prepared to be underwhelmed. But the eastern entrance to Zion was a drive through towering sandstone formations with incredible layered patterns formed by petrified sand dunes.

After driving through these formations, we took a fairly steep descent down into a beautiful valley, with a river in the bottom, and the rock formations towering overhead as much as 2000 feet above.

We took a strenuous hike, climbing up 1000 feet.

The trail continued, but it looked like this, with 1000 foot drops on both sides. One of us continued up a little farther, but came back when the chain stopped and it was tilted rock with no chain and a drop.

Here is a picture of the road and a bus from that height.

The chain section

While it's mostly desert, a spring seeping out of the rock supported maidenhair ferns and these columbines.

Zion draws world class rock climbers - there are three in this photo.

Here is a closeup of the last picture.

Even though the signs said "Do Not Feed", the chipmonks were TOO tame - that's my toe at the bottom of the pic.

Bryce National Park

Bryce National Park blew us away. It is the most beautiful place I have seen. I don't know how to describe how spectacular it is, so I'll just give you some photos.

Sunrise at Bryce Point

This one was named for a famous statue of Queen Victoria.

This was the highest elevation we have been to on our trip, and we could really feel it hiking.

We got to see bristlecone pine trees at the highest point in the park. One this big could easily be over 1000 years old.

Insect damage in a dead tree trunk.

Back Again

By now, some of you probably thought we had fallen into a canyon and disappeared. No, we're still out here having a great time. But lately, we have rarely had electricity, let alone internet access. I hope to be adding more photos soon, but to catch you up since I last posted, we have been to Navajo National Monument (beautiful, quiet, and peaceful), Monument Valley (gorgeous, but very busy), and Mesa Verde National Park (Very interesting ruins from a huge population with highly developed weaving, pottery, building, and agriculture. Near Mesa Verde we stayed at an amusing campground attached to an Indian casino. They give campers coupons for free casino play. We had to have a worker show us how the video games worked, but then we won back most of our camping fee.

After Mesa Verde, we went to the southern part of Canyonlands National Park, called the Needles, where we did some fantastic hikes through spectacular scenery. Our last one was our most ambitious so far: 6 miles with 1750 feet of elevation change, a walk through a narrow crevice, and some scrambling over rocks so steep we needed both hands as well as feet.

Today we are taking a day off in Moab, UT for shopping, cooking, cleanup, battery charging, making 2 loaves of bread etc. Tomorrow we are off the northern section of Canyonlands, called Island in the Sky for a couple of nights, then Dead Horse Point State Park (where the last scene of Thelma and Louise was filmed), and then Arches National Park before circling back to Moab for another "chore day".