In these last few days we visited several State and National parks. The parks are all along the canyons made by the Colorado and Green river. First the Colorado National monument. Here we spent half a day driving around the rim of the mesa (table mountain) looking down into the valley below. The road twisted and turned along the valley rim and the sights are breathtaking. It was our first taste of this rugged dry red landscape. From here we followed the Colorado river as it cut its way through the country side on Scenic Hwy 128. Instead of looking down from the mountain into the red coloured valley we were driving in it! At the so-called “Fisher Towers” we stopped for lunch. The high sandstone towers are a favourite for climbers. There is a campsite here but with only 5 places and it had already filled up. We drove further following the river and passed many campsites on this road. Most of them appeared full. When reaching Moab, we decided to drive all the way up the mountain to the park campsite at the end of the Arches NP. Unfortunately, it was full (as expected) but we could reserve a site with the camp host for the next day. We did this and drove back to Moab and found, in the dark, a campsite just outside town.
Moab is the centre of the canyon area with 3 parks. You can rent buggies and 4×4 Jeeps for off-road or gravel road driving around the canyons. There are also mountain bikes for short and long distance road and off-road cycling. We stuck to driving and hiking short trails to various sights. First we drove up Hwy 279 to see some rock paintings and at the end of the road just before the Potash mine we made a long strenuous hike to some arches in-between the mountains. Next we went into Arches NP and walked towards the different arches on our way to the campsite. The evening before we were able to take some fantastic pictures of the rock formations at sunset. The red rock then glows in the sunset light. The sort of pictures you normally see advertised on park brochures. The beautiful campsite is situated on top of the (table) mountain with lovely views down into the valley filled with sandstone rock formations. In the morning we hiked to several more arches before driving out of the park and into Canyonland NP. We drove straight to the only campsite in the park and managed to reserve the last available campsite (first come first serve, only 9 sites). Again a fantastic place in-between the rocks close to the Grand canyon overlook. The Canyonland NP covers the gorges of the Colorado and the Green river. We were not able to see where the 2 rivers meet but could follow the path of each river on both sides of the so called “Island in the sky” for some distance. The views are fantastic as you can see in the pictures. To get a better view of the Colorado canyon, we also went to Dead Horse state park to look down into the gorges cut by the river. There is a 50 and 100 mile 4×4 drive around the Island in the Sky following the rim of the Colorado and Green river canyon. If our 4×4 axel had not been removed, it would have been a fantastic day trip to make. Instead we drove further south in the direction of Mesa Verde NP.
Rudy Welling's Travels 