Moab, Utah

Our journey on Friday was from Farmington, NM to Moab, UT via Cortez, CO.  The highway takes us through Shiprock, NM with the famous rock formation from which the town gets its name.  This area is also the Four Corners where Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado all come together. 

One of the sites we see along the highway are the tops of the mountains in the distance still covered in snow.  They have had some late snow in the area this year.

After driving through Monticello, we begin a climb through some low mountain areas with beautiful views of the sandstone cliffs.   It is interesting what wind and weather have done to the various formations. 

Here too along Highway 191 is a place called “Hole N’ the Rock” which is a 5,000 square foot, 14 room home carved out of rock by Albert Christensen and completed by high wife and children after his passing.  “It began as a small alcove for the Christensen boys to sleep in at night and grew into a man-made engineering marvel 20 years in the marking”.   There is also a 65 foot chimney and a deep bathtub built into the rock.  Some original furnishings as well as Albert’s painting and tools used to create the home can be found along the 12 minute tour.

Moab is the home of Arches National Monument and Canyonlands National Park as well as Dead Horse State Park.  It is very much a tourist city and resides along the Colorado River where rafting, jeep and ATV tours and hiking abound.  If you don’t have a weekend reservation at a hotel, lodge or RV park ahead of time, you will be hard pressed to find one upon arriving on a weekend.   Here we are in our site at the Spanish Trail RV Park just south of the city of Moab and below some of the rocky cliffs.  Notice that the "little black cloud" from last summer is not with us so far this year.

Today Ron and I ventured off to Canyonlands and Dead Horse Point.  It is a 25 minute drive from Moab along the highway and then onto a wide two lane and sometimes windy and upward climbing roadway to the Parks.  Along the way there are many overlook points with what I can only say are awe inspiring scenic vistas in the distance.  One video we watched today described the area as more beautiful than the Grand Canyon.  It is amazing how deep the gorges are and how the Green and Colorado Rivers wind through the rock formations. 

Canyonlands is actually three different areas with Island in the Sky to the north (where we went) the most accessible, The Maze to the west and The Needles on the east. Water, wind, gravity and the weather were and are this land’s architect with flat layers of sedimentary rock cut into hundreds of canyons, mesas, buttes, arches and spires.  At the center are two canyons carved by the Green and Colorado Rivers.   

Monitor and Merrimac Formations

 

Dead Horse Point

Dead Horse State Park is located along the same route and towers 2,000 feet above the Colorado River with breathtaking panorama views of pinnacles and buttes.  According to legend, the point was once used as a corral for wild mustangs roaming the mesa.  Cowboys rounded up these horses herded them across the narrow neck of land into the point.  They then separated out the ones these wished to keep and fenced off the remainder of the horses with branches and brush leaving them on the waterless point to die of thirst with a view of the Colorado River below.    How inhumane can you be!  

While we have been to Arches National Park before, we did not do so this time.  However, I am putting in a couple of pictures from a previous visit for you to get a feel for the beauty and formations of this area as well as the others. 

 

We returned back to town to stop at the Moab Brewery for a bit of locally made beer and our dinner.  While I am not a great beer connoisseur, I had found their light pilsner beer to my taste last time we stopped.  Cold beer on a hot summer day sure does taste good.

Signing off until we arrive at our next destination – Salt Lake City Area