Here we are at Day 26! The trip odometer passed 7,000 miles this morning on our way to Canyonlands National Park in Utah. It’s hard to believe that we have been on the road for almost a full month. Time is flying! We are doing pretty well with expenses. We’ve managed to maintain a daily budget of around $120 a day (for hotel, gas, food, and incidentals). Go us!

Utah is a gorgeous state full of incredible natural features. There are enough parks, monuments, and historically significant artifacts to keep one busy for weeks or months. We don’t know how long we will spend here, but expect it will be at least a week, maybe more. Today’s adventure took us to the Canyonlands!

It takes us a longer-than-average time to get anywhere in places like this because we want to photograph everything. Even just driving around is a feast for the eyes. It’s hard not to stop every mile or so to take in the ever-unfolding vistas. This entire area is dominated by huge eroding sandstone mesas the color of sunsets. They’ve been shaped by millions of years of wind and water to create mystical shapes, canyons, and cliffs. Look anywhere, and you will see sage greens, deep maroons, peaches, yellows, pinks, and white. The sky today was robin’s egg blue with tufts of clouds lazily floating by. Perfect!

Just one of the endless roads of the Utah plains

One of many roadside photos. Every time the road turned, there was another photo to take!

Along the way we visited Newspaper Rock. It is a historically significant collection of Native American petroglyphs. Archaeologists are not sure if the rock depicts a single story or event or if it is just a collection of doodles. It doesn’t matter what it is, the drawings are amazing. I especially like the illustration of the guy shooting an arrow at an elk’s butt. See below.

This is only a small portion of Newspaper Rock. Looks like the ancients may have believed in yetis…or Bigfoot perhaps!

The Canyonlands has a variety of hiking trails, 4 x 4 driving terrain, and overlooks to explore. We looked into doing some of the “off-road” driving trails, but then read the park brochure. Once we learned that there were rivers to cross, “steps” to drive up and down, and QUICKSAND in places we changed our minds. One of the areas is called “The Maze” because of its convoluted and branching roads in the back country where people spend days or weeks exploring. No thanks.

We saw lots of these little guys on the trail. This poor thing lost the tip of his tail to a predator, but escaped with his life!

We decided to take a hike on the most popular trail in the “Needles” section of the park. Shortly after beginning the hike, we found ourselves scaling steep rocks, scrambling with arms and legs to reach flat areas, and hopping across deep rifts. Something didn’t seem right. The trail is listed as “moderate,” and appropriate for just about anyone. Turns out we weren’t paying close enough attention to the cairns that mark the trail and were not on a trail at all! Thankfully, we saw other people in the distance on the real trail and made our way over before we became totally lost, hurt, or worse!

Billy with a cairn. Sometimes you need to look carefully to find them on the trail. People make their own at random, which is a jerky thing to do. I think we followed peoples’ impromptu cairns in the beginning which is what got us lost!

The trail took us through amazing rock sculptures (some looked like mushrooms, others like hamburgers, and many looked like armless people deep in conversation), around canyons, through desert-like areas (complete with cactus!), and to the base of the Needle formations themselves. The final viewpoint looked out over an unbelievable sandstone vista. It was spectacular and humbling to stand beneath stone towers hundreds of feet tall and millions of years old.

One of hundreds of photos I took of the scenery along the way. The lighter stone is stronger than the darker stone. It protects the darker stone from erosion, which is how the spires and “mushrooms” form.

The Needles viewpoint was the hike’s payoff. Looks like a giant mushroom farm to me.

“Nevermore”

We returned to our car and saw that we had a hitchhiker on the roof. Check him out! This dude had zero fear of humans and seemed to like posing for photos. He checked us out for a while, called to his mate several times with loud squawks, took a dump on my car, and then was on his way to visit someone else.

We are really looking forward to exploring all the Utah has to offer. Good night for now!