The Lovely Southwest, Part 2

One of the Moab locals. It's really a funky town.

Canyonlands National Park

The early morning Moab sky on the day we toured Canyonlands.

To continue with the Southwest trip story, we come to one of the highlights of our trip, a half-day jeep (actually Toyota 4X4) tour to Canyonlands National Park. 

Anne looking apprehensive about our jeep tour.

We booked with NavTec Tours of Moab, highly rated for both jeep and river tours. Our companions on the tour, Linn and Sally, were a couple from Oklahoma City. We all met our driver, Buzz, a typical desert rat — 

Our guide, Buzz, contemplates jumping after an hour with us in the jeep.

early to mid-forties, wiry, guides in the summers, bums around in the winters. He was quite knowledgeable, especially about the geology of the area, and willing to say when he didn’t know. He was aware of his clients and worked hard to make sure it was a good trip for us all. The vehicle was a five-seat Toyota 4-wheel drive that Buzz could take everywhere.

One of our first stops was at the Potash Petroglyphs on our way into Canyonlands National Park.

As an overview, one of the things we learned from Buzz was that Canyonlands Nat’l Park contains 580 miles of canyons. 

There are numerous accessible overlooks, but we had the best views by actually being in the canyons, not just seeing them. We stopped several times and got out for views. 

Nice view of Colorado River through the canyons.

Buzz points out a fossil of a shell on one of the mesas of Canyonlands.

Some of the views were overlooks of the Colorado River below, including a stop at the “Thelma and Louise” cliff (where they drove off at the end of the movie—you can find it on YouTube if you’ve never seen it).

Jug Handle Arch

The rock formation that hides Musselman Arch.

Musselman Arch

A rock formation where softer materials weathers away leaving harder material on top is called a hoodoo.

Other stops were for specific geological formations—Jug Handle Arch, Musselman Arch, hoodoos, and others. 

The road is passable only with four-wheel drive vehicles.

We met another NavTec tour vehicle along our route.

I took plenty of images (over 300) and some were holding the camera out of the car to catch views as we bounced down jeep roads. 

The road heading toward the canyon walls. We climbed from the valley floor to the top of the mesa via some dramatic switchbacks.

Our longest stretch without stopping was as we climbed out of the canyon on a single-track, cliff-side road—the dropoffs were big and Anne and Sally had their eyes closed much of the way up. Even I was a little apprehensive about some of the switchback corners. 

A Canyonland pinnacle along the tour route.

The View from the Top

The entire trip was only about 60 miles (very slow miles) and Buzz had taken us to an extra section because he had only one trip that day. We’ll certainly consider more trips like this in the future.  

Newspaper Rock

Twelve miles off UT491 heading from Moab to Monticello is a spectacular location for petroglyphs. It’s a large rock face with hundreds of images chipped into the desert varnish on the rocks. 

 We had to wait for a bus of tourists to clear before we got close (a fence keeps good visitors about six feet back from the rock). By the time we had taken all the photos we wanted, another bus had already pulled in.

Aztec Ruins National Monument

After a night in Durango, CO, a good surprise for us on our way to Santa Fe was a visit to Aztec Ruins National Monument in Aztec, NM. The ruins aren’t Aztec, but they are Anasazi (now called Ancestral Puebloans), ancestors of modern Pueblo tribes. The ruins contains over 400 masonry rooms and are over 900-years old. 

Aztec Ruins Overview

The Great Kiva--Interior View Below.

We walked the half mile trail through the ruins. The highlight is the reconstruction of the Great Kiva (ceremonial house). We enjoyed the walk, but couldn’t spend as much time as we would have liked because we still had a three hour drive to Santa Fe.

Santa Fe Store Window with Reflections

NEXT: From Scotland I’ll continue the stories of our week in Santa Fe, while I prepare our reports from a fall trip to Scotland.