Arches and Canyonlands
Friday, 9/19 – Sunday, 9/21
We had a pretty exciting day today, driving from Price, UT to Moab. We covered less than 150 miles, but about 95 of them were on gravel roads. We began the day headed toward the Cleveland Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry. It is about 30 miles outside of Price, in the middle of nowhere. The directions say to go to Elmo and then follow the signs. I don’t know if we can’t follow signs or they can’t post them, but we got lost right away. These roads didn’t even show up on the GPS. Fortunately, a couple of women in a pick-up truck came by and assured us that the road we were on would get us back to where there were signs. We did finally get there, only to find about 6 cars already there – 15 minutes before it was due to open. As it turned out, a 4th grade class from a Lutheran school in Salt Lake City was there on a field trip. A crowd in the middle of nowhere, and I mean nowhere! It made us feel a little better when the teacher, who had been there 10 or 12 times, said her group got lost trying to find it, too.
Anyway, it was a very cool place. They have found thousands of dinosaur bones in a 3-foot deep layer of earth. They have found no skeletons still intact, but all of the bones are very well preserved. Most of the bones are from carnivorous dinosaurs, which they said is very unusual. They can’t figure out why so many were in this particular place and why the bones were in such good shape, but all jumbled up. They have a small museum and also one shed open to the public that has replicas of the bones placed exactly where the real bones were found. There were some really huge bones found there.
We then headed south toward the Wedge Overlook over the Little Grand Canyon created in the San Raphael Swell. This was a better marked drive, but also on gravel roads. The Wedge Overlook was an amazing view of a canyon that did look very much like a smaller Grand Canyon. It is a thousand feet deep (as opposed to over 5000 in the real GC), but has much of the same beautiful sandstone cliffs and coloring found in the Grand Canyon. Next we drove to the Buckhorn Wash Road that goes right through the canyon – how great is that?! You don’t even have to hike into and out of it. The best parts of the drive were that there were hardly any other cars there (we saw maybe 3 on the whole drive) and the amazing pictographs on a canyon wall made by the Barrier Canyon people over 2000 years ago. They are beautiful and unlike any we have ever seen. They are larger than life and painted on the rock in bright reds and yellows, and occasionally blues and greens. The figures are larger and far more intricate and detailed than any of the other pictographs or petroglyphs (carvings in the desert varnish on the rocks) that we have seen.
After completing the drive through the Wash, we finally arrived at Interstate 70 to head east toward Green River. We got on at what has to be the most amazing scenery on an interstate in the country. The road went down through Spotted Wolf Canyon, a very steep and gorgeous area. I guess it was one of the last sections of interstate completed due to the difficulty of getting through this section.
We stopped in Green River to see the John Wesley Powell Museum. Powell was the first to navigate the Green River and into the Colorado all the way to the Gulf of California. They have a great orientation movie about the journey. The museum was small, but well done.
The final leg of the day’s journey was on to Moab. I did a great job of booking a room at the Red Cliff Lodge outside of Moab. The Lodge is beautifully set on the banks of the Colorado River among the red cliffs of the canyon. Our room was very large with a nice sitting area and a patio that looks over the river. The downside, as it turned out, is that the Lodge is 14 miles outside of Moab -14 miles on a narrow, two lane road that follows the Colorado River through its canyon. At the end of a long day of driving it seemed like a very long drive. And on Saturday a.m. as we drove back down this road toward town, there were hundreds of bicyclers participating in the Moab Century Race, which made for an even more exciting drive.
The food there was very good and reasonably priced compared to the lodges in the National Parks (sky high, we thought). We had three excellent dinners there, including Arthur’s elk medallions. And this place is a winery, too. We liked the merlot (yes, in spite of Sideways) and one of the red table wines, but the whites were way too sweet.
When we arrived on Friday, there were several fancy cars (Porsche, Maserati, BMW) with signs on that said Peak to Peak Rally. They left on Saturday, and then about ten old Jaguars arrived. They were having their own rally. I guess Moab is a road rally kind of place. There were also bunches of Range Rovers traveling around in packs, including one strange truck-like vehicle unlike any Arthur had ever seen.
The scenery around this area, with its radiant red rocks and major geological upheavals, is amazing. We visited Arches National Park on Saturday and Canyonlands on Sunday. Arches was really crowded, and there were plenty of folks at Canyonlands, too, especially considering how remote most of the park is. We have been studying all of the geological information at the Visitors Centers trying to get the different strata of rocks straight in our heads. It is mind boggling, but we (Arthur especially) are making a little progress. How long we will remember any of it is the question.
We can’t get over the number of Europeans here. We have been at lots of stops in this area when we heard far more German being spoken than English. And the number of rented RV’s is almost scary – Cruiseamerica, which we have seen in the past, plus RoadbearRV and El Monte. We think only Europeans could afford rental RV’s these days. I had heard some shopkeepers in Cody, WY saying that Yellowstone had 30,000 more visitors this year than last, but attendance at the Museum in Cody was down. After spending a couple of weeks in the Parks, it occurs to me that the increase is due to foreign visitors who are probably less likely to visit a museum of American history.
Arthur has developed what we call the “Dorothy” syndrome: i.e., “There’s no place like home.” Fortunately, we go home tomorrow. We have been on the road more than 3 weeks, and in some ways, it seems longer (I have forgotten what our regular life is like). We have seen and learned a lot. I have been surprised that living out of a suitcase has not been a big issue for me. I think, however, that the pace of touring and sightseeing has had its impact. We are both fairly worn out. And I have really missed my regular exercise.
We had a pretty exciting day today, driving from Price, UT to Moab. We covered less than 150 miles, but about 95 of them were on gravel roads. We began the day headed toward the Cleveland Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry. It is about 30 miles outside of Price, in the middle of nowhere. The directions say to go to Elmo and then follow the signs. I don’t know if we can’t follow signs or they can’t post them, but we got lost right away. These roads didn’t even show up on the GPS. Fortunately, a couple of women in a pick-up truck came by and assured us that the road we were on would get us back to where there were signs. We did finally get there, only to find about 6 cars already there – 15 minutes before it was due to open. As it turned out, a 4th grade class from a Lutheran school in Salt Lake City was there on a field trip. A crowd in the middle of nowhere, and I mean nowhere! It made us feel a little better when the teacher, who had been there 10 or 12 times, said her group got lost trying to find it, too.
Anyway, it was a very cool place. They have found thousands of dinosaur bones in a 3-foot deep layer of earth. They have found no skeletons still intact, but all of the bones are very well preserved. Most of the bones are from carnivorous dinosaurs, which they said is very unusual. They can’t figure out why so many were in this particular place and why the bones were in such good shape, but all jumbled up. They have a small museum and also one shed open to the public that has replicas of the bones placed exactly where the real bones were found. There were some really huge bones found there.
We then headed south toward the Wedge Overlook over the Little Grand Canyon created in the San Raphael Swell. This was a better marked drive, but also on gravel roads. The Wedge Overlook was an amazing view of a canyon that did look very much like a smaller Grand Canyon. It is a thousand feet deep (as opposed to over 5000 in the real GC), but has much of the same beautiful sandstone cliffs and coloring found in the Grand Canyon. Next we drove to the Buckhorn Wash Road that goes right through the canyon – how great is that?! You don’t even have to hike into and out of it. The best parts of the drive were that there were hardly any other cars there (we saw maybe 3 on the whole drive) and the amazing pictographs on a canyon wall made by the Barrier Canyon people over 2000 years ago. They are beautiful and unlike any we have ever seen. They are larger than life and painted on the rock in bright reds and yellows, and occasionally blues and greens. The figures are larger and far more intricate and detailed than any of the other pictographs or petroglyphs (carvings in the desert varnish on the rocks) that we have seen.
After completing the drive through the Wash, we finally arrived at Interstate 70 to head east toward Green River. We got on at what has to be the most amazing scenery on an interstate in the country. The road went down through Spotted Wolf Canyon, a very steep and gorgeous area. I guess it was one of the last sections of interstate completed due to the difficulty of getting through this section.
We stopped in Green River to see the John Wesley Powell Museum. Powell was the first to navigate the Green River and into the Colorado all the way to the Gulf of California. They have a great orientation movie about the journey. The museum was small, but well done.
The final leg of the day’s journey was on to Moab. I did a great job of booking a room at the Red Cliff Lodge outside of Moab. The Lodge is beautifully set on the banks of the Colorado River among the red cliffs of the canyon. Our room was very large with a nice sitting area and a patio that looks over the river. The downside, as it turned out, is that the Lodge is 14 miles outside of Moab -14 miles on a narrow, two lane road that follows the Colorado River through its canyon. At the end of a long day of driving it seemed like a very long drive. And on Saturday a.m. as we drove back down this road toward town, there were hundreds of bicyclers participating in the Moab Century Race, which made for an even more exciting drive.
The food there was very good and reasonably priced compared to the lodges in the National Parks (sky high, we thought). We had three excellent dinners there, including Arthur’s elk medallions. And this place is a winery, too. We liked the merlot (yes, in spite of Sideways) and one of the red table wines, but the whites were way too sweet.
When we arrived on Friday, there were several fancy cars (Porsche, Maserati, BMW) with signs on that said Peak to Peak Rally. They left on Saturday, and then about ten old Jaguars arrived. They were having their own rally. I guess Moab is a road rally kind of place. There were also bunches of Range Rovers traveling around in packs, including one strange truck-like vehicle unlike any Arthur had ever seen.
The scenery around this area, with its radiant red rocks and major geological upheavals, is amazing. We visited Arches National Park on Saturday and Canyonlands on Sunday. Arches was really crowded, and there were plenty of folks at Canyonlands, too, especially considering how remote most of the park is. We have been studying all of the geological information at the Visitors Centers trying to get the different strata of rocks straight in our heads. It is mind boggling, but we (Arthur especially) are making a little progress. How long we will remember any of it is the question.
We can’t get over the number of Europeans here. We have been at lots of stops in this area when we heard far more German being spoken than English. And the number of rented RV’s is almost scary – Cruiseamerica, which we have seen in the past, plus RoadbearRV and El Monte. We think only Europeans could afford rental RV’s these days. I had heard some shopkeepers in Cody, WY saying that Yellowstone had 30,000 more visitors this year than last, but attendance at the Museum in Cody was down. After spending a couple of weeks in the Parks, it occurs to me that the increase is due to foreign visitors who are probably less likely to visit a museum of American history.
Arthur has developed what we call the “Dorothy” syndrome: i.e., “There’s no place like home.” Fortunately, we go home tomorrow. We have been on the road more than 3 weeks, and in some ways, it seems longer (I have forgotten what our regular life is like). We have seen and learned a lot. I have been surprised that living out of a suitcase has not been a big issue for me. I think, however, that the pace of touring and sightseeing has had its impact. We are both fairly worn out. And I have really missed my regular exercise.
posted by arthurandjane at 10:45 AM
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