Canyonlands National Park - the Needles District

When I first went to Moab for a training class I really wanted to see the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park.  But, I had a dinner date with a friend and soon realized there just wasn't enough time to do both, so I turned around and went back to Moab after a brief visit at Newspaper Rock.  That was 2002, I think.

On this trip when plans to visit friends in Montrose fell through due to illness, we decided to take the river route toward Moab.  We planned to find a campsite along the river, but when we started looking, we were close enough to Moab they were all full.  Perhaps the ones 20+ miles out were full, too.  And as we rolled through Moab we saw all the RV parks were full.  As we recalled they were very expensive.  As recent retirees, we don't like expensive.

So, on we rolled.  We figured out that we weren't going to boondock (just stop and stay without an official campground, services, etc.) south of Moab.  On we rolled.  In Monticello we found a nice little family RV park.  The family lives there, has their horses, goat, dogs, chickens and whatever else.  They sell real eggs (farm fresh) with really orange yolks and great flavor.  We'll pick up some more before we leave here.

So, finally I got to see the Needles District.  It is spectacular!  It's a long day drive, but well worth it.  We stopped a lot to take photos and videos.  The air was pretty hazy, so my camera had trouble with the autofocus.  But the eyes can cut through some of the haze and see the colors and patterns in the rocks.  We probably drove over 150 miles today, making a loop with some backtracking.  It's a long way from Hwy 191 out to the park boundary.  But it's a beautiful drive.  We took a picnic lunch with us since we were pretty sure there would be no place to buy a lunch.

Our campground owner had suggested we take an alternate route to the Needles that leaves out of town and goes through the mountains.  There were a couple of primitive campgrounds on the route.  The first one would work for us, the second one only had one, possibly two sites that could work.  The road met the "official" road into the district before the Newspaper Rock State Recreation Area.

Newspaper Rock is a sandstone bluff covered with ancient (and a few not so ancient) petroglyphs. (Petroglyphs are chipped into the rock, pictographs are painted on the rock).  The difference in color between the old desert varnish and the "newly" exposed rock beneath makes the pictures show up well.

After Newspaper Rock the road goes on for several miles, through BLM land.  The flat bottom country is green this time of year (at least this spring it is) and there are a few ranches.  There are lots of roads heading off to interesting sounding destinations, but they're not roads we'd take the motorhome on.  Eventually, you come to the boundary between the BLM land and the park.  The formations become more spire like and less wall like.  Everywhere you turn there are spires, canyons, rocks the will someday be "balanced rocks".  The colors are spectacular with layers of reds and whites, with the occasional darker layer in between.

Long view at Dutch Shoe Arch pullout

Dutch Shoe Arch

 

One of the rocks at the Confluence Overlook

After driving to all the places we could reasonably drive to in a Honda, we headed out to the highway so we could drive a few miles north, then take a 22 mile road to the Needles Overlook.  Too bad the air was so hazy.  It may be hard to pick out any details.

Just in the lower edge of the are some tall formations on the valley floor below us.  In the distant haze are the Needles that give the District its name. 

 

I'll post more photos, when I can, on my Flickr account www.flickr.com/photos/mooseduds