ESCALANTE, UT

Our first stop today was Utah’s Anasazi State Park Museum where we learned about the Anasazi.  These village-dwelling farmers existed in the southern Colorado Plateau of the Four Corners region of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and southern Nevada between about A.D. 1 and 1300.  We watched a movie and viewed the exhibits in the museum before walking outside to see the 6 room replica and the excavation.  Major excavations were undertaken here by the University of Utah in 1958 and 1959 which uncovered 97 rooms, 10 pit structures, and hundreds of thousands of artifacts.  We were able to see outlines of unexcavated rooms and a reproduction of one L-shaped above-ground building.

Then on to Utah’s most recent addition to protected lands by President Bill Clinton’s proclamation in 1996, The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.  The monument is partly named for the Escalante River Canyons which begin on the edge of Boulder Mountain and end at the Colorado River. When early geologists saw the cliffs and plateaus rising 6,000 feet from the north rim of the Grand Canyon to Bryce Canyon, they called it the Grand Staircase.  We saw huge expanses of red-orange canyons, cliffs, rivers, and high-desert plateaus.

The next day we drove Hell’s Backbone, a road that is considered one of the most dramatic stretches of road in Utah as it travels along a ridge with a sheer drop on both sides.  It is gravel and only about one and a half lanes wide.  We started the 45 mile loop and at the beginning we saw the same scenery we saw as we drove into Escalante yesterday.  Four deer were spotted enjoying a stroll thought the trees and we were lucky enough to get pictures and a video.  As we climbed the types of trees changed (near the top we even saw Aspens that were changing color already) as did the fact that the road narrowed even more and there were drop-offs on at least one side if not both and they were SHEAR drop-offs!  Judy was NOT comfortable.  When we approached the ‘top’ of this climb we arrived at Hell’s Backbone Bridge which spans a crevasse on a narrow ridge no wider than the bridge itself.  This trip was VERY DRAMATIC and Judy was very relieved when we got back to ‘ground’ level!  The weather was perfect, at the top it was 63 degrees and in the mid seventies the balance of the day.

CAPITAL REEF NATIONAL PARK, UT

From Hanksville, UT we moved only 48 miles and spent 2 days at Capitol Reef, Utah’s second largest National Park.  It is long and narrow and follows the Waterpocket Fold, a 100-mile rust-red wrinkle (or giant buckle) in the earth’s crust.  It is not really a reef.  The local word reef referred to any rocky barrier to travel.  Here the Fold and its eroded jumble of colorful cliffs, massive domes, soaring spires, stark monoliths, twisting canyons and graceful arches are preserved.  It was home to a historic Mormon settlement, countless narrow canyons, and some of the most surreal beautiful rock formations in the Southwest.  We ended the day picking apples in one of the orchards that are now maintained by the National Park Service.  You can eat all you want of the fruit while in the orchard, and pay only $1 per pound for what you remove. Here are some pictures of Capital Reef National Park.

BLANDING & HANKSVILLE, UT

We had a short drive from Moab to Blanding.  On the way we saw a beautiful natural arch right by U.S. 191 called Wilson Arch.

After lunch we visited two ancient Indian ruins.  One was built into the rock outcrop below a cliff overhang.  It was only about three miles from the campground.  The other was at Edge of the Cedars State Park and Museum.  The ruin was just sitting behind the museum at ground level adjacent to a residential sub-division.  We explored the ruins, and Mike went down into a Kiva (this is where religious ceremonies were held) after we toured the amazing museum.  It is a world class research facility with an archaeological repository for all of Southeast Utah.  Their collection of Ancestral Puebloan pottery is surprising both in the amount of items and their condition.  The storage area is visible to museum visitors and you can get information on any object by accessing a computer right by the display.  Their most prized possession is a Macaw Feather Sash.  They have many pottery pieces, mainly bowls; woven items like baskets, sandals, arrow heads, baby carriers, etc.

The next day we took The Moki Dugway/Valley of the Gods Road Trip. The first stop we made was so Mike could hike in to see another Indian ruin.

We then drove to Natural Bridges National Monument where we saw three of the world’s largest natural stone bridges off an 8-mile loop through the park. We learned from a ranger that moving water sculpts bridges and frost action and seeping moisture sculpt arches.  Wind surely has some effect on them also.  The bridges here are larger than the arches in Arches according to the ranger.

Our next stop was Muley Point, getting there on a four mile dirt road.  It offered us a great view from the canyon’s edge, looking at Valley of the Gods, Monument Valley and John’s Canyon.  A spectacular view and worth the drive.

Then on to the Moki Dugway!  A ‘dugway’ is a road or trail along a hillside which is dug out to provide a path for transport.  This was built in the 1950’s during the uranium boom.  It is an 11% grade on gravel and the views from the road and the overlook at the top were worth the trip, although it did get a little hairy at times.  Good thing we just had the truck.

Onward…..our next stop was Goosenecks State Park where we enjoyed our picnic lunch with some Italian tourists.  We came across our first Indian peddler of jewelry.  Having lunch here was nice because a shelter over a large picnic table was provided.  The Goosenecks sits on a high mesa and has one viewpoint of several huge river bends flowing in a deep canyon with a series of stepped cliffs and terraces.  It is a feature recognized as one of the best examples of entrenched river meanders in the world.  The San Juan River flows through 5 miles of canyon while progressing westward only one mile.  Looking down on it was a spectacular view.  The canyon is 1,500’ deep and geologic layers are easily seen. Gorgeous!  Mike remembers seeing pictures of the Goosenecks while he was in college, so this was a real treat to see it in person.  We also saw some beautiful rock outcrops in the distance, in reds and beiges that formed wave-like shapes, or chevrons!

Our next move was to Hanksville, a tiny bump in the road town which served as our base for visiting Goblin Valley State Park.  We saw some absolutely beautiful scenery on the way here.

After a yummy omelet we headed to Goblin Valley State Park.  Just at the entrance to the park Mike spotted 5 pronghorn antelopes frolicking in the sun. We watched them for quite a while.

Goblin valley, which is only about a mile across and two miles long contains thousands of mushroom-shaped pinnacles or hoodoos a few feet high that someone obviously thought resembled goblins.  The formations have large orange-brown boulders of hard rock atop weaker sandy layers which have eroded more quickly, as a result of millions of years of the combined effects of wind and rain.   We walked among the stone gnomes inhabiting the valley and were very lucky that most of the time it was overcast.  

On our way ‘home’ we stopped to see some petroglyphs.  There weren’t many, but they were very clear and a hike wasn’t necessary!