Big Depths and Red Rocks, Got Utah?

~ Mesa Arch ~

Utah has big shoes to fill. Mike and I are in love with Colorado... not the cost to live there, but the State itself. We love the lifestyle choices, the politics, the variety of sports, the scenery and the beer. Yet onward we move because two of my favourite National Parks are in Utah. The first place that we visited was Moab.

Just outside the town of Moab you will find Mill Creek. When we arrived in Moab the temperature was 95° F and the Colorado River is silty and slow. Luckily I knew about Mill Creek. It is shallow enough to have relaxing pools to sit and hang out in, but also has a current that allows you to ride down a few rock water slides. The current also makes the water a lovely temperature. You can see me in the water on Instagram at C_Cocozza .

After a wonderful swimming experience we tried to go to Arches National Park to pick up a map and decide what we would do tomorrow. We found out that the park is undergoing massive road construction and is closed from 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. Sunday night through Friday morning. This may not seem like a big deal, but Arches is covered in beautiful red rock that is best early in the morning at sunrise or late in the evening at sunset. Right now that means that for most days of the week you can't see sunrise or sunset in the park. I was devastated and so we moved on to Canyonlands National Park early.

When we got to Canyonlands we were 15 minutes too late to get backcountry permits for that night. Again this might not seem like a big deal, but we were 35 miles from the main road, with every inch of it on Federal or State Park land. This generally means no camping on the side of the road or anywhere else. Luckily Mike is really good with Google and noticed on the way in that we did pass thorough a section of BLM land. BLM land ( Bureau of Land Management ) is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior that administers more than 247.3 million acres of public lands in the United States. This basically means that it's your land, my land, all of our land, which means generally it's free to use. This land constitutes about one-eighth of the landmass of our country. The BLM was created by President Harry S. Truman in 1946. The reason that a lot of the Eastern United States is totally unaware of its presence is because most BLM public lands are located in 12 western states.

Yellow is BLM. Click on the map for a better version.

So why did I go into that long explanation? Because the only reason we didn't have to drive 35 miles back to Moab is because we stayed in Cowboy Camp BLM campground. It is 6 miles from Canyonland National Park and the view is amazing.

I was so excited that I decided to make Vegetarian Sloppy Joes for dinner. Remember, no refrigerator... so all of the "ground beef" that we used is actually ground protein substitute. Quite delicious actually; if you're interested in the brand I'll send it to you. It is the first time I've ever made Sloppy Joes of any type and I think it turned out fairly well.

Canyonlands is a large National Park. It's actually divided into 3 sections: Island in the Sky, The Needles, and The Maze. I have listed them from the most popularly visited to the least popular. Unfortunately The Maze is completely off limits if you don't have 4-wheel drive 😝 Like most people, we started off with Island in the Sky. The most iconic photograph of the entire park is the first one in this blog: Mesa Arch at sunrise. Normally Mike and I try to avoid the craziness that comes with famous sunrise and sunset photograph locations. This time I thought let's get up and do it, it's not that crowded. I'm not sure I would again because since 2012 the popularity of this site has exploded.

Luckily there were a lot of professional photographers who kept the frontcountry tourists in line. For some reason, people feel the need to get in front of arches to have their photographs taken! It doesn't make any sense to me because you are not even in the sun. As you can see, there were a ridiculous number of people at this sunrise and it wasn't even a weekend!

Here is Mike standing to the right of Mesa Arch. He is looking down into one of the canyons that gives Canyonland its name. Keep in mind I haven't seen the Grand Canyon... this is as close as I have come to seeing something that vaguely compares. It's funny how I will compare the Grand Canyon to this, whereas Mike compared this to the Grand Canyon.

In Canyonland (Island in the Sky) there is a fairly good road infrastructure that allows one to drive and see many of the most interesting points. This is why it is the most popular and visited part of Canyonlands National Park. I am super excited that tomorrow we're going to do one of the longer hikes that I was never able to do on my last visit. Today however we went all the way to the far end of Island in the Sky and walked the Grand View trail. As you look at this cairn, you can see that it is made of three distinct colors of sandstone. I love this style of trail marking.

The Grand View trail gives you a panoramic / up-close idea of why the canyons look as they do in this section of Canyonland. In this photograph you can see that the majority of the rock is Red Cedar Mesa Sandstone. This sandstone would have been almost entirely worn away were it not for the white sandstone cap on top. This sandstone is much more dense and erosion-resistant, thereby protecting the red sandstone beneath it. This is going to hold true for many of the parks in Utah.

Here is an overview of what the canyons look like near Grand View trail. This picture gives you an idea of how many canyons there are in this part of the park; but what you may not notice immediately is that there is a long road, 100 miles, called the White Rim Road. You need a permit and a 4-wheel drive to go on it. Mike swears that we're coming back at some point with Kristine and Matt, Dan and Becky, to drive it together. This is the first time I've ever heard Mike express any kind of trepidation about driving on a road. If you look at it, you can see that it goes right along the lip of the Canyon. Also another first was that Mike said he would defer to Matt! I don't know why, but he never says that he'll defer to me in driving!

We escaped Canyonlands today without getting wet! We finished all of our hiking, got back in the van, and then it opened up. When we got back to our camp spot we were rewarded with a beautiful double rainbow. I know it only looks like there's one, but if you really look to the right and the left of the obvious ones there is a fainter second one. This is the first time I've seen both sides of a double rainbow. Just a little science about double rainbows... In a double rainbow, there is a second arc. It is usually dimmer and seen outside the primary arc. It has the order of its colors reversed, with red on the inner side of the arc. Why? Because the light is reflected twice on the inside of the droplet before exiting it. See if you can see it in the photo above.

This was a really tough photograph to take. The sun was not in a great location to show our trip to the botton of the Syncline Loop Trail. In Canyonlands, generally it's you looking down into the bottom of the Canyon, but on this trail you get to go down and look back up to the rim.

Here is a picture of what the trail looks like when you're at the bottom of the Canyon looking up.

One of the things about the Syncline Trail is that there is a spur trail into Upheaval Dome. This photograph shows the flat area between the main trail and the spur trail. You do have to go a long way in on a river wash but how often do you get to be in a bowl, with a canyon above you? We really enjoyed walking the 2 miles into the middle of the dome. The problem is that all the way in we failed to look back…

Here is Mike next to the sign at the end of the trail. It's the odd thing about Canyonlands; they seem to just randomly end trails wherever they feel like. After the end of the trail we turned around… you know when you get the Canyonlands brochure at the entrance gate they tell you the weather can change quickly. I guess we all learn the lesson once.

This particular photograph is exactly the same location, oposite side of the canyon as two photographs above. They are separated by less than 30 minutes. Once we saw it, we started running. Now of course if you know anything about us, running is not the best thing for Mike to do...

Though if we hadn't run we would never have made it to this tiny safe spot. Also this would never have happened...

Under our tiny alcoves we got hailed on in the desert! Here is Mike holding one of the smaller hailstones. We were incredibly worried about the solar panels on the Beaver Lodge. It was only later that we realized this one valley, where we were sheltered, is the only one that got hailed upon.

As soon as the hail was over and we were not worried about our backpacks / camera getting completely soaked, we looked around and saw that within five minutes of the rain a dozen waterfalls had appeared. This was a dry river valley and dry cliff area before the rain began.

When I stood up, the valley that we had considered sheltering in looked like this. We stood around and took a lot of pictures as the rain abated. Perhaps we should have moved faster...

...although this particular hike bears out my favorite saying, "You can't change anything without changing everything." If we had taken less photographs or moved more quickly we would not have gotten to shelter at our second location when the rain torrent came back. Never have we heard thunder echo as we did in that 2nd location. It's the sort of thing that you think you only ever hear on the BBC's Planet Earth show. It was the kind of thunder that echoed through the canyons.

Here is the largest waterfall that we saw in either location. It took me climbing on two large rocks to get it. Again it may not seem like it, but this waterfall came, grew, flowed and disappeared within the time it took us to hike to the end of the Canyon. The end is not very far away; I would say less than 20 minutes.

Of course on the way up we ran into this guy. The Canyon Tree frog, Hyla arenicolor, technically he is unconfirmed in Canyonlands according to the government's Canyonlands Amphibians website but I think that our video seals the deal. If you'd like to see a video make sure you check out Instagram C_COCOZZA.

On the way out of the Canyon we ran into this puddle of water that was growing larger and larger. We knew what that meant and began running again. Never have I been as wet as we were when we reached the car. We ran through thunder, lightning, and the fear that it would strike near us. In the last 2 to 3 miles of the Syncline trail there really was nowhere to batten down and shelter. The only option was to push forward and get to the Beaver Lodge. When we got home all of our clothing got heaved into the tiny sink. We figured the water could run down the drain and we would deal with it later. I'm not sure that the tile was entirely ready for this deluge.

Earlier in this post, I referenced the fact that we knew the hail had not fallen anywhere except in our valley. Perhaps you were curious as to why we were so sure. We ran into one hiker on the trail right after we had sheltered. He did not have any hail. Also much later we met two guys from Hawaii who were also camped in our BLM campground. I guess I didn't discuss them before because the experience we had with them does not translate very well to pictures. They were in a small yellow VW Bug. One of them climbed the largest hill next to the campground and played a Hang Drum, aka Handpan. I hope that someday I can give this kind of music back. If you're wondering what the heck I'm talking about, here's a good example of the instrument here.

So at 7:00 a.m. on Friday we went into Arches National Park. Luckily we made it all the way to the far end of the park as the Sun hit some of the things I most wanted to photograph.

This is a photograph at a distance of an area of the park called Devil's Garden. It is one of the most remarkable sections of the park, one of the longest hiking trails, and an area where one can get away from the crowds if you arrive early. I hope you can see how many structures are evident in this photograph. We got to hike in and around many of them.

This is Landscape Arch. It's one of the most slender arches in the park. Just over half way across on the right, a huge section cracked off in the mid-nineties. They say it sounded like thunder and it would have been very interesting to see it fall. You can see the rubble underneath the arch. Even though they don't appear in motion the arches are extremely stable, assuming you don't walk on them.

As you walk along the Devil's Garden trail you get to walk up geologic features called fins. This is a fairly easy one that we passed over after Landscape Arch.

The fin led us up to the back side of Landscape Arch. There we saw this guy, the Red-Spotted Toad, Bufo punctatus. Though we would see many more of this species, this one is by far the largest.

This arch is named Partition Arch. It is just to the right of Landscape Arch. I like the way you can see through it and out onto the main plain of Arches National Park. It is not the kind of view that you can get from the trail in front of Landscape Arch.

Like I said before, there are a lot of fins in Arches National Park. The sign you can see in the distance says "Trail this way".

And this is the view that you get if you turn right and look across the fin. There are reasons that the trail runs on rock. The first is that, when you tread on it, there's no possibility of killing plants in the landscape that take 40-plus years to form. The soil in the desert is a biologic mix of algae, fungus, bacteria and other plant life that grows very slowly but manages to hold the sand grains together.

It's called biologic soil crust. If you were here it would look like this, and be older than I am.

This is Dark Angel. It is a black sandstone structure 150' tall at the end of the Devil's Garden trail, or the beginning of the Primitive Trail, depending on your point of view. Either way it's a very interesting structure that I didn't get to see when I was here last time.

On our way back on the Primitive Trail we suddenly realized that all of the rain that had hit Canyonlands had made the plants here produce beautiful flowers. Remember neither of us had ever been to this part of the United States except in the high heat of June, July and August. This is an example of what the rain showed us.

Then we got to this section. Pretty much everyone said to head towards the left section, using Mike to orient, take off your shoes and you'll make it through. From the angle that you're looking at, we actually came from the opposite side. I refused to take off my shoes, I refused to go through the water! I thought "climb the sandstone hill and go over". Not necessarily the easiest route.

On the way back on the Primitive Trail we hit Pine Tree Arch. This was quite late in the day so we were very lucky to get a people-free photo. After this we hit Tunnel Arch and then returned to the van. This is the end of the loop, Devil's Garden trail with a return on the Primitive Loop trail. It was a lovely walk.

After this we decided to head to a few of the other arches that were good in the afternoon. This is a hard one to photograph! The arch is called Broken Arch. It was one of the last ones that we did today because we needed to get to the visitors center and get permits for Fiery Furnace in the morning. We also went to Moab for all-you-can-eat salad, pizza and soup at Zax's.... oh so magical to have non-van-produced dinner!

This is a picture from the Fiery Furnace overlook. This is one of the normal stops on the Arches loop except you aren't allowed to hike here without a park permit. They do a few ranger-guided tours every week but we didn't want to go on one. We were lucky to get a permit to take ourselves through.

After getting the lay of the land, as you saw in the previous photo, we headed into the Fiery Furnace itself. As you can see, the climb down is a lot of fun! The Fiery Furnace is not as it sounds, extremely hot; it is actually an incredibly cool maze of slot canyons. What makes the self-guided tour so incredible is that you get to take yourself anywhere you want to go. You don't have to follow any particular path as long as you don't tread on the biologic soil or the sand dunes. Oh, this also assumes you have the personal responsibility to take enough water, food, and pack out all of your trash including human waste. Hey, use the facilities before you go. Most people take less than three hours.... we were in over six.

This is an example of the morning sun on the Fiery Furnace from the bottom up. It's amazing to see the sun hit the red and white sandstone. Getting to see this so early was one of my first mistakes. I made a crazy climb up a narrow rock furrow, only to realize that this plateau was much more easily accessed two canyons over! Don't worry, we came back here together right at the end.

After I realized my mistake we turned around and went in what we thought was the opposite direction. Here is a shot from the mouth of what should be the last canyon, but was our first Canyon. It is looking out towards the rest of Arches National Park. We didn't know it at the time but our trip down this canyon would end up being our favorite.

Sometimes when you leave your phone unattended this is the result…

I only realized it after I climbed down off the rock. Bouldering in this area was probably the highlight of my trip in Arches.

Mike climbed up to see the view with me. One of the best things about taking this hike yourself is that everyone gets to make their own path, even if it's to the same location. The level of self-navigating adventure is amazing because when we went down this Canyon the only footprints that were there were our own.

Here is a picture of one of the open areas that is miraculously inside the Fiery Furnace. If you think back to the overlook photograph, it doesn't seem like there could be this much open space. It's also one of the ways in which you can get yourself turned and twisted around, wondering where you've been and where you haven't been. While we were on this hike we did run into other independent hikers. A lot of people were trying to follow a crude trail that they thought existed. Thanks to our time in Gros Morne (way back in Newfoundland!), we were very comfortable with making our own way.

As we wandered around we got to see a lot of plant life that has not been trampled on by careless visitors. Here you can see 5 or 6 varieties of plant that are clinging to the side of a stream wash.

One of the pieces of advice that we did get from a park ranger before we set off was, "Don't shy away from the dead-ends". Here is a picture of what one of the areas looks like. If you go all the way down you get to see some beautiful plant life, climb some great sandstone, and sometimes, on some of them, see incredible sights. Of course I didn't entirely internalize that when we got to this dead-end. I was super-frustrated!!! If only I were a better climber I could make it up this area and see what was at the top. It just wasn't to be on this trip.

Keep in mind we're still in the first Canyon area! This is the way back. Of course, because we hate retracing our steps for fear of missing something, we decided to take a slightly different return route. As you look at Mike at the top of this huge rock, you might think it's impossible to get down. We did.... each in our own way.

Perhaps you remember that I told you there were amazing things at the end of dead-ends. This is Surprise Arch. Mike says that it's his favorite one in the entire park. Perhaps it's just because we had a grand adventure here. If you know me at all, you know I hate not being able to get somewhere. I stamp my foot and think it can't be that difficult...well, this one was. We did make it through this arch, only to find...

Well this is what we found... a fin to nowhere! Getting across here actually took teamwork. I managed to climb across, landing on the sandy spot you see in the foreground. Mike grabbed on to my foot and climbed up too. It was only then that we realized the way back was down a very slick, steep sandstone slope into a crevasse. It's not that the crevasse was all that deep, but you could easily have broken your leg if you were not careful. Again teamwork prevailed. I lay down on the sandy spot and suspended Mike towards the solid ground on the original side of the arch. He made it safely. Then he put his hands on the sandstone, making a place for me to put my foot. This is one of those situations in which we could not have crossed or gotten back reliably were there not two of us. The amazing thing is if you ever saw an objective photograph of the area you would say it's easy; who couldn't make it? That's what we thought too... May we remember that it is only experience which tells you what kind of a slope you can or cannot climb up, down or across.

Oh, here is something else I wouldn't have thought to bring up, even though it is covered in the Arches National Park newspaper. When we got our permit to go into the Fiery Furnace, they asked us to take pictures of any graffiti we saw. It wasn't really something that anyone pushed because when we brought back these photographs they were shocked that there was any at all. I have to say that the entire park has been pristinely maintained by the rangers and US taxpayers. Anyone who does this does not deserve to be in the backcountry. Once you've been here, you understand that you get to feel as though you're all alone and the first one ever to see it. You would never want to ruin that for someone else.

Here we are climbing one of the last spots on the way out. In the end we realized that we went the opposite way of the guided tour. You never can make us do something the normal way!

I know it seems odd that I added this, but it's a sign that we kept seeing in every single toilet in most National Parks. For the love of God, why?! Who would ever behave this way in a toilet?! I leave it to your own imagination as to why the sign would be necessary… After this long hike we drove to the Delicate Arch parking lot to bed down for a rest before hiking up to see what is known as the quintessential view in Arches. You'd think I would have learned my lesson from Canyonlands.

On the way out to Delicate Arch, make sure you don't miss the petroglyphs. Everyone gets so caught up in getting there for sunset that they just push on past. Normally it's not such a big deal, but keep in mind that they are best viewed in the late afternoon and for us this was the only day to see it. Think back to our very first post in Arches; they closed the park before sunset every day but Friday night and Saturday night. You might wonder why we didn't try to see it on Friday night, but the weather was so awful leaving us only this one shot to see it.

This shot is magical! It wasn't the best sunset ever to hit Delicate Arch, but this is what you're not seeing… there was a wedding. The bride and groom and their bouquet and the entire wedding party are just off to the left. There were more than 200 people taking photographs of the arch as this photograph was taken, and of course there are the crazy people who think that they need to plant themselves directly in front of the arch to have a photo. If you look at my photograph above, it is clear that taking it back where I am lets you be in the foreground and the arch in the background yet everything is in the waning sun.

I beg anyone who reads this to consider where exactly do you want to be in the photograph, and how considerate of other people's photos do you want to be. Remember of the 200 people who were surrounding me, many of them came from a lot farther afield than I did. Their accents said Europe, Asia and Australia. They are all here to take the same photograph of this arch. Sorry, they don't want you in their photo, just as you don't want them in yours.

Perhaps the moral of the story is don't go to Delicate Arch at sunrise or sunset. Find a less popular one and make your photo there. I can honestly say that perhaps the journey there and back, as well as your time at the Arch, will be more rewarding. Plus perhaps you get to still look at yourself in the mirror after you have made the journey.

This is Corona Arch. It's not in the National Park, but in the National Forest, and is a beautiful place to visit. As we hiked up to see this view we only passed one other couple. As I looked at this arch I realized that we were leaving the area and headed away from Moab. Not that this is a bad thing as Moab is NOT friendly to camping and staying outside of approved RV parks. Normally I don't care so much, but 100% of the parks here are awful parking lot places with little greenery, no privacy and very high prices. Beware of this, if you come here you will get yelled at by tired, grumpy cops if you camp inside town limits. I did this hike in 2012 and am glad I got to come back and see this arch at sunrise. We are now off to the Needles section of Canyonlands, hoping to leave the crowds behind.

On the way we stopped to see Newspaper Rock State Historic Monument. It is a rock panel carved with one of the largest known collections of petroglyphs in the lower 48 states. The 200-ish-square-foot rock work is one of the largest, most easily accessible and fiercely preserved set of native American communications that we will see. It is hard to know exactly who made each portion but it is assumed that a mixture of ancient cultures contributed. They include the Basketmakers, Ancestral Puebloan and Anasazi peoples.

The petroglyphs feature a mixture of human, animal, material and abstract forms. Unfortunately, unlike Mesa Verde, there was no native interpretation of the work available. I do have to say that while looking at this panel I heard better conversations happening between visitors than I have overheard in most of the national parks we visited. I guess that the abstract nature gives people a desire to pause and think about what it would have been like to carve these almost 2,000 years ago.

The Needles area of Canyonlands is located in the southeast corner of the park, about 70 miles from the crazy and very boondock, camping-unfriendly town of Moab. It is named for the colorful spires of Cedar Mesa Sandstone that dominate this large park area. As soon as you enter this region you know that it is nothing like Island in the Sky. Gone is the convenient road access to tons of lookouts. Gone also are the short hiking trails and deep, wide canyons. In this area you look up to see sandstone structures tower over and around you, often on the open plain. This section of the park is not conducive for short hiking! Most of the best things to see require a 10+ mile round trip commitment. The government website even states that this section of the park offers, "... many opportunities for long day hikes and overnight trips."

We decided to stay in a BLM land campground once again. In the desert it's best not to camp boondocks style because of the living soil. One single footstep can ruin up to 100 years of growth. The campground closest to the entrance of The Needles is called Hamburger Rock campground. I assume you can see why because of the rock structure that is behind the Beaver Lodge.

Even in this area the wildlife abounds! We were lucky enough to see this Darkling beetle laying eggs in the sand. I am not sure of the Genus or species as it is a member of a large family of beetles called Tenebrionidae. The number of species in this family is estimated at more than 20,000. Unfortunately she must be a rather inexperienced member of her species because she chose to lay her brood right next to a red anthill. I don't suppose that they are going to make it to adulthood.

Today we have a long, generally circular hike planned. It starts at Elephant Hill trailhead and is about 16 miles long. We went out to Devil's Kitchen, down along the Joint Trail, out to Druid Arch and then back to the Elephant Hill trailhead. It ended up being an extraordinarily beautiful hike.

Here you can see an example of the sandstone needles and canyons that made up a good portion of this hike. It is different from the northern section of the park because these sandstone structures erode in two directions, causing the slender needle-like structure to form.

If you are curious as to what the canyons on the Joint Trail looked like, here is Mike standing in one to give it scale. These are called slot canyons because of their narrow nature. You might think that nothing would want to live in a place like this, but just look at the photo compilation below…

Every once in a while I have to admit that I gave incomplete information in a previous blog!!! I'm thinking of the Velvet Ants in Great Sand Dunes National Park of Colorado.... the same genus Dasymutilla is in Utah too and they are not ants. So this one is for Kyle, who helps to keep me motivated to hike longer, blog more, and learn everything I can out here. They all belong to the Mutillidae family and are parasitic wasps. The females, like the one pictured above, are wingless and known for their painful sting, which I did not experience since I know that EVERYTHING in the desert can protect itself so don't touch. Even when you are trying to help a prickly pear cactus re-root after being washed away, you may end up on the wrong end of the spikes.

Later on the Joint Trail we had to use this log to get over a large rock. It's amazing how the bottom of the canyons does not wear evenly, making this hike a lot of fun. Also you can imagine that if there was any rain, even miles upstream of this point, you would not want to be anywhere near this Canyon. Think about the waterfalls that formed in the other section of Canyonlands and now imagine being trapped here as the water rises. Luckily as you can see there was not a cloud in the sky all day.

Hiking in the desert often requires you to walk in river washes. This is because the biologic soil can't form here. But what can live here are tiny toads. This is the same species that we saw in the Island in the Sky section of Canyonlands. It's clear that all the standing water let them develop within the last two weeks. If you look at the water in this photograph you can understand why we packed in all the water we would need to drink. It's not that this water is necessarily dangerous but when it stands it can develop bacterium and of course it's full of silt.

Here is a Blue Northern Spreadwing, Lestes rectangularis. Mike and I just like to refer to it as the X wing Damselfly! Wedge, is that you, are you in there?!!

If you take a walk down the two-mile spur trail, you come upon Druid Arch. This is the kind of park feature that you wonder if you've missed. You hike all the way down the Canyon, you're standing at the bottom looking at the back wall wondering where it is. Then you do a rock scramble all the way up to a rock plateau. You turn around and there it is. It's the kind of arch that you shouldn't try to see if you are incapable of doing the rock scramble, as it is invisible until you and it are on the same level. When we set off on this hike, I had asked the girl in the park office if it was an arch worth seeing. She said it was "unique". As Mike can tell you, giving an object this label means it had better live up to some pretty high standards. I think the word unique is way over-used. If there's more than one like it, then why are you describing it this way? Mike just turned to me and said "well perhaps we should just call everything unique-ish". I was fairly impressed by this arch because it is technically 4 arches all together. Two of them are very small but if you look hard I believe you can see them all.

Thamnophis proximus, or the Western Ribbon snake, is a species of garter snake. We were fairly excited to see him because this is the first snake that we've seen and been able to photograph. It's kind of amazing that we did see him because he was in the last couple of miles of a long hike and he was underneath a sandstone overhang. Two more seconds and he would have disappeared behind a cleave in the rock.

Our camping spot afforded us a beautiful sunset view tonight. For just a few moments the rock flushed this incredible magenta color. Before we left The Needles I wanted to do some of the shorter trails that contained interpretive guides.

This is an old cowboy camp that is on the Cave Spring trail. I thought it was very interesting to see this fairly modern settlement juxtaposed with the ancient Pueblo and settlements nearby. It's the age-old saying that nothing is really new. The cowboys knew that this area had a reliable water source, just the same as the native peoples did.

The second short trail that we did is called Potholes. This trail has an inordinate amount of small water holes that had been etched and created by wind and sand. In each of these tiny water craters, macro invertebrates abound. We got to see mosquito, gnat and shrimp larvae. In some of the larger pools we also saw prominent snail populations. Mike and I really enjoyed getting down on our hands and knees and looking at each small independent universe.

Then we were off to Natural Bridges National Monument. In this park you're able to see 3 natural bridges. You might wonder what's the difference between a natural bridge and an arch but the difference is quite easy to explain. An arch is formed through wind and precipitation erosion, whereas a natural bridge is formed through flowing water erosion. You can just drive the 8-mile loop and see these 3 natural bridges, but we decided to do the 9-mile hiking trail. If you ever find yourself in this national monument,may I suggest that you do the same. There's really no way to get a good feeling for this park if you don't walk it.

Because of our decision to walk the park, we left to see Bears Ears National Monument. This is the United States most recent national monument. The area within the monument is largely undeveloped and contains a wide variety of natural, cultural and historic areas.

Because this area is only loosely-policed BLM land, you can camp anywhere that's reasonably flat. We got lucky and found a spot where the Beaver Lodge was towered over by The Bears Ears Mesas. Also it afforded us our first opportunity to make a fire. Mike built the fire ring and gathered the wood that was abandoned by previous campers. I couldn't believe it when I heard it crackling. We got very lucky that there was enough wood there to keep the fire going. Unfortunately I didn't have any supplies for S'mores! I guess we're going to have to have another fire at some point.

Here's a view of the Beaver Lodge with the right Bears Ear in the picture. You can see how beautiful it looks as the sun goes down. One of the most amazing things about being here was that the stars were astounding! Might describe them as about 95% of what they were like in Gros Morne. Keep in mind that the stars there were the best stars that either of us had ever seen. The other amazing thing is that the comparison was remarkably accurate because both times there was no moon to spoil the view.

The first natural bridge that we were able to see was Sipapu. It is a Hopi term meaning "place of emergence". You can see that there is so much greenery underneath the bridge because this area is carved by moving water.

On the way down to this arch we met Kirk. He was looking for someone to hike with a short way and we ran into him several times throughout the park. We offered him the opportunity to walk the whole loop with us, but he was more comfortable going back up and driving and then hiking to each natural bridge. He is a great photographer so he and Mike shared tips for photographing the difficult desert landscape.

On the way to the last bridge Mike stepped on the mud entering a wash and this is the result! Never have you seen such sticky red difficult mud in all your life. He was a very good sport and let me take a photograph. It's the kind of thing you get to look back upon fondly because no one got hurt.

The last, and in my opinion the most beautiful of the natural bridges, is called Owachomo which translates to "rock mound" in Hopi. After this point it's just a small hike out of the Canyon and you're back where you started at your car. One of the nice things about this park is that you drive past all of the arches to get to your starting point. This means you get to see them from the top and then hike through them from the bottom. It really makes the experience very special.

After we left Natural Bridges National Monument we headed towards Monument Valley. This path gave us the opportunity to drive through and hike in a huge portion of Bears Ears. I'm going to add in a map of this area just to give you an idea of how enormous and diverse it is.

I wanted to give you a panoramic view of one small section so that you can grasp the expansiveness of the land and the fact that it should always be kept in the public trust. Unfortunately with our current political climate this is one of the many areas that is on the chopping block. On June 12, 2017 Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke "proposed significantly scaling back the borders" of Bears Ears. You may wonder why anyone would want to do this, but local farmers and ranchers want less restriction on grazing and of course others want to drill for oil. If you drive hrough this area, ranching and farming are already happening. I hope that more people in Utah and across the nation will stand with Bears Ears and help to right the wrong done to native peoples in the past. This entire area is very sacred to many tribes, and keeping it intact is one way to honor their cultural, religious and historic rights.

This particular fight is prominently placed in my mind because the next location to which we are on the way is on the Navajo reservation.

Spoiler alert... Not in love with this place... What I am in love with are the red rocks, vast expanses, great hiking and sparse greenery of the West. Unfortunatly Monument Valley is largely a commercial money-making racket.

You can see most of the park from the road. Half of the park is closed if you are not on a pay driving tour, which does not interest us. There is almost no hiking here and the roads are terribly maintained. I feel lucky that the Beaver Lodge made it out unscathed.

There is a very poor museum covering the history of the Native Peoples. I think that this part offended me the most because you're on a Navajo reservation and I would assume that they would promote their cultural heritage. Sorry that this blog nearly ended on such a low note, but I guess it was bound to happen eventually that we would run into an area that we did not love.

On the upside, after we left Monument Valley we proceeded through Arizona towards New Mexico. On the way there we passed a man hitchhiking on the side of the road. I insisted that we turn around and pick him up because he was dressed in black, long sleeves and long pants. It was simply too hot to be walking along the road like that. When we got to talking, we learned that he had two daughters, had lived on the Navajo reservation his entire life, and was walking 29 miles to the town of Shiprock. (See the photo above of the rock structure that gives the town its name. * Not my photo because this rock is sacred to the Navajo and they ask you not to go near it.) He chatted with Mike about the antics that he and his four best friends get into, the local legends and spiratual beliefs of his people. He told us about Skinwalkers, UFO's and herbal remedies. He chatted about the geology and fault lines of the area too. This man was very proud of his home and he knew a lot about the area. When we dropped him off, he shook our hands and introduced himself as Barry. We waved goodbye and moved on towards New Mexico and green chilli burgers in Santa Fe.