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. 

The Lovely Southwest, Part 1

Upgraded to 1st Class

Mt Jefferson through the clouds.

     For several years when I was teaching I traveled from Oregon to the US southwest every summer to help run summer debate workshops for high schoolers from around the country. First in Santa Fe (College of Santa Fe), next Albuquerque (University of New Mexico), then in Durango, Colorado (Fort Lewis College), and finally in Flagstaff (Northern Arizona University). Each summer Anne would join me at debate camp and we’d get to do a little sightseeing. Now, every couple of years we go back to the southwest to do some of the sites we didn’t get to or to see favorite attractions again. On this two week trip we are basing in Moab, Utah, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, with stops in Durango.

     We flew in to Albuquerque to start our trip. We had just one afternoon so we got a quick visit to Petroglyphs National Monument. 

Most likely a birthing symbol.

No one can know what all the symbols mean, but the experts can make educated guesses. This is likely a Shaman because of headdress.

An easily identified bird symbol, but the deeper meaning is a guess.

Anne climbed the steep, rocky trail to the top. Going down was more difficult.

Native Rock Art (petroglyphs and pictographs) fascinate me. With Native American and Hispanic heritage (my maternal grandmother was Hispanic and Native American, probably Apache, from the Durango area), the southwestern native culture has become of great interest to me—on Netflix check out the three episode series by Robert Redford called “Skinwalkers,” based on books by Tony Hillerman.

A cholla cactus with blooms at the Monument Visitor Center.

     The Long Drive—six hours from Albuquerque to Moab—was our second day. Aside from plenty of big rigs traveling along at 75 mph plus, there wasn’t much to see. We got views of Shiprock, an interesting rock formation in Utah, but no photo opportunities—too far still to go. Finally, just outside of Moab we got into some areas that were more photogenic. 

Had to stop because of roadwork near some interesting geological formations. Then we got a nice look at Wilson Arch a few miles out of Moab. 

Moab is a grand tourist destination filled with interesting shops and restaurants and is pricey—Motel 8-type accommodations would run about $200 a night, if you can find a room available.

     Our next day was filled by a visit to Arches National Park, one of the most popular parks in the system. At the entrance the queue was two lanes of traffic for almost half a mile—took us 20 minutes to reach the front of the line in our lane. 

Surprisingly, the park crowds never got in the way of our seeing whatever we wanted to see and except for the arches in the Windows area, my photos were relatively tourist free. We saw all the major sites in the park, 

The Three Gossips

The Courthouse Tower

Courthouse Tower from the back.

except for Devil’s Garden (we would have had a devil of a time getting there with the crowds).

Two views of Park Avenue.

The Park Avenue overlook was filled with photographers, all taking turns getting the shot they wanted. 

Balance Rock from a ways away.

South Window Arch

Double Arch

Balance Rock parking area was closed, but I got a couple of images from the side road. At Wolfe Ranch we hiked out to the petroglyphs there

Wolfe Ranch Petroglyphs and a close up.

I believe these were made by Ute Tribe members in the 1750s.

—some very nice rock art. The most fun was hiking through a small, narrow slot canyon to Sand Dune Arch. 

The softer rock wears away leaving these vertical slabs -- they are called fins.

Anne hiking between the fins into a slot canyon.

Sand Dune Arch

Much left to explore in Arches National Park.

The Tower of Babel

      We played golf at the lovely Moab GC on one of our days in the town. 

We played in the morning, but in the later afternoon the surrounding rocks turn deep red.

After golf we drove over to a Rock Art site only a block away from the golf course. 

It has some of the best preserved petroglyphs in the area. 

Your guess is as good as anyone's, but the figure is likely a ceremonial dancer.

There was more we saw in the area, but that will have to wait for a future post.

NEXT: Canyonlands Jeep Tour, then on to Mesa Verde, Durango, and finally Santa Fe.