Enroute, we had great views of the La Sal mountain range, which continues to gather snow and looks more and more like the Rockies every day!
We passed kind of a neat visitor attraction: “Hole in the Rock” which is a 5,000 sq.ft. house that a fellow has carved out of the sandstone mountain!
We managed to find a very low-key RV Park in Monticello that only has 4 other trailers besides ours, and they seem to live here, so they’re gone during the day (presumably for work) and stay in their trailers at night when they get home. It’s much more sane than Moab. We can take the cats out for walks right in the RV park, and there is a golf course across the street that is not open yet and so the cats can wander the club house area and rough surrounding the putting green.
We managed to find a very low-key RV Park in Monticello that only has 4 other trailers besides ours, and they seem to live here, so they’re gone during the day (presumably for work) and stay in their trailers at night when they get home. It’s much more sane than Moab. We can take the cats out for walks right in the RV park, and there is a golf course across the street that is not open yet and so the cats can wander the club house area and rough surrounding the putting green.
Thursday (March 30th) John and I drove over to the 2nd district of Canyonlands National Park, called “the Needles”. It is an area that is known for it’s red and white “striped” pinnacles, but it is vast and has much more geology than the “Needles” to admire.
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| Climbers on rock wall |
We did a scenic drive from our book that took us from Monticello up into the Abajo mountains, which are volcanic in origin, and didn’t have as much snow as the La Sal range. The weather forecast was for snow Thurs night, so we thought it a good opportunity to see them! The Abajo scenic backway rejoins the highway enroute to Canyonlands, and we stopped and watched some climbers scaling the red rock walls just outside the Park.
We did the scenic drive through the Park, as well as four of their viewpoint hikes, which totalled about 4 miles and so was do-able with the time we had.
John commented that it was very cool to be hiking about 1,000 ft lower than where we were at Island in the Sky, and that the views were nice, but not extraordinary like we’ve seen in other Parks. Personally, I think he’s getting desensitized to all this grandeur and beauty…
I think the views are gorgeous! I especially love the varying colours in the rock. This Park is a good combination of some of the other Parks we’ve been to: the red rock walls of Zion, the white Navajo dome rock of Capital Reef and the Entrada sandstone that forms natural bridges and arches, as in Arches National Park. Canyonlands has it all!
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| Island in the Sky (larger mesa in background) |
I thought it was very neat to look across the canyon at Island in the Sky and Dead Horse State Park which are only 9 miles away as the crow flies, but over 100 miles away by road!
We were able to see the Grand Viewpoint where we had lunch and felt like we were at the top of the world.
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| Desert Paintbrush |
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| "Needles", pinnacles formed by a dozen events of ebb and flow of inland sea |
It was MUCH warmer in Canyonlands than in Monticello and at one point, I had to layer down while we were hiking.
But… the black clouds rolled in and we knew the snow storm was approaching. We got back to Monticello in time to get the cats out for about 20 minutes before the winds kicked up and the storm blew in.
This is what we got up to Friday morning (March 31st)… We couldn't get Tawny outside... Sam was out for about 3 minutes.
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| View from our bedroom window |
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