Day Five - Oh Baby!!

Monday dawned with heavy clouds and fairly cold (low 40s) but no rain in the forecast so we were ready to get out of the campsite and start exploring.

We dedicated the day to discovering Canyonlands National Park. It is just an indescribable place. Vast canyons and rock formations, with such a huge variety of colors and landscape. We'll post a few pictures here but in a later blog we'll post a whole gallery of pictures from this day. It was the most incredible day!

We started off with a drive around Horsethief Campground, where Dan and Amy stayed last year. We stopped by the Island In The Sky Visitor Center to check out a 3D topo map of the area and plan out our day. Even at the Visitor Center you can see views like this:

Island in the Sky

We made our way to Mesa Arch, a very popular photo spot. You literally have to stand in line to get a photo of the arch without strangers in it. It's a breathtaking view, and some people even climb on top for a photo. We were sure those teenagers were going to blow off at the next big gust of wind...

We headed over to Upheaval Dome, a bizarre volcano-ish formation whose origins are just theory. There was a small hike up to the edge of the dome and that's where we knew we were at 6000 ft elevation! We had lunch at a nice little picnic spot there, shivering in the wind, then moved on.

Green River Canyon

Next stop was Green River Outlook.You can look waaaaaaay down on the White Rim Trail, a long multi-day offroad trail that goes all over Canyonlands. It starts with Shafer Trail, a precarious descent from Islands in the Sky. Would love to do that one someday!

We moved on to a couple other overlooks, then stopped at the end of the driving portion of the area, Grand View Point. Wow. You just have to see this place to believe it's actually on earth!

So we started heading back to the campsite, but just felt like our day would not be complete unless we left the pavement. Many of the roads are very long and one-way, but there was a good opportunity in the Gemini Bridges road. It takes you to its namesake, which is a really scary place where relatively thin stone bridges (2 of them, go figure) cross over a canyon. It used to be a popular spot for rock crawling, but in 1999 a guy went over the edge so it's blocked off for that now. Lots of rock climbing anchors at the tops of the rocks though...looks like a great place for that. 

Because of the recent rains there were plenty of awesome mud puddles along the way. Trucks got dirty!!

Shafer Trail

Life insurance opportunity

Dirty Disco

Dirty Jeep

We ended the day with a fantastic dinner at Buck's Grillhouse, which happened to be right next to our campground. Moab isn't really known for its cuisine, but if you want a great meal...go there. Well worth it!