I Survived Utah – Day 2 – Canyonlands National Park

On Saturday Ian and I made our way to Canyonlands National Park.  While Arches is defined by rock protrusions, Canyonlands has deep valleys carved through rock.  The road to Canyonlands is so remote that there are no fences around the bordering cow fields.  This leads to a good question: Why did the cows cross the road?  Answer: To get to the other side (and give us a heart attack.)  The cows didn’t seem to understand why we kept beeping at them.  At a standstill, we mooed and took their pictures.

Once in Canyonlands we made a short hike to Mesa Arch, overlooking a vast valley of red rock.  We didn’t get there at sunrise as we planned, but the light was beautiful rose gold all the same.  One of the nice things about both parks we visited is that instead of using signs to mark the trails, the parks use stacked rocks.  It’s a much more natural way to mark things that lets the beauty of the landscape shine through.

After exploring Canyonlands, where I managed to lose one (but not both) of my gloves, we ate lunch at Denny’s a la Road Trip Tradition and ventured back to Arches.  The same park ranger recognized us from the day before, probably thinking, “Suckers.”  We only had about two hours until sunset so we had to decide between the hike to Landscape Arch, which spans the length of a football field, and Delicate Arch, which decorates every license plate in Utah.  We chose the latter and began our hike.

The guide map boasted that the trip would only be a three mile loop, but it’s not an exaggeration to say we walked uphill both ways, fighting a fierce wind that was somehow always in our faces and never at our backs.  The hike was pretty exhausting and finally finally we turned the corner on a sharp ledge and saw the arch balancing in the distance.  We crossed a lip of rock into a small valley to take some sunset pictures.  We faced issues, however, crossing back.

Delicate Arch is surrounded by walls of rock, and our small crossover happened to be the one place where all of the wind funneled to.  The wind is a massive and strong erosive force, flinging sand and carving rock.  When I tried to cross back over the lip, with steep cliffs on either side of the three foot path, the wind lifted my backpack off my back.  I had visions of floating away to my doom, parachuted by my travel pack.

Luckily the wind subsided just enough to let us pass.  We walked back with the sky bursting into a rainbow colored sunset.  Definitely worth it.  After dark we decided on dinner at a restaurant that had looked busy.  When traveling to strange places, busy is a good sign.  Sadly, we had our hopes dashed when we realized the only reason the restaurant was busy was because it was closed for a private holiday party.  Of course.

We settled on Eddie McStiff’s, which Ian objected to on the basis of name alone, but which turned out to serve a delicious meal.  We left the restaurant to a light snowfall.  This time we made it to nine pm before crashing.  Traveling is not for the weak of heart.

Filed under Life, Photography, Travel | Comment (0)