Another Giant Hole : Utah Lotsa Parks, part 4

Day 5: The Needles and Valley of the Gods

We woke up early and got on the road, but not before we had to make the absolutely necessary stop at a drug store to get pumice stones for our heels. Dry weather + hiking all over = surface of the moon. Also, we’re a bit precious. We took our purchases and ourselves south toward the Canyonlands Needles District.

On our way out of Moab. Who gets the job of repainting those letters?

The aforementioned hole.

The loooong road into the Needles District. It ain’t ugly.

The petroglyphs on Newspaper Rock are from Archaic, Anasazi, Fremont, Navajo, Anglo, and Pueblo cultures. Some are 2000 years old. This is along the way into Canyonlands.

 

Finally a glimpse of open range cattle farming!

 

Cave Spring Trail hike. It was a cowboy camp because of, duh, a spring.

 

Thank baby Jesus for the shade. It was HOT!

 

An old storage chest left under the outcroppings. The seams were patched with the flattened metal from coffee cans!

 

The Cave Spring, which is more like a Crevice Trickle…

 

Handprints left by the native Americans who used the spring before the cowboys. Not gonna lie, it was kinda creepy.

 

You can see the way the rocks created overhangs in this picture.

Ladder to the top of the slickrock.

 

Topside. Not a bad vista, but hot hot hot.

Again, how do these dumb rocks not topple and fall? This place was engineered by drug addicts.

We got back on the road and headed down to the end where to the Slickrock Trail which is a 3 mile hike taking you over sandstone hills to various view points for the Needles, Abajo Mountains and Las Sal Mountains. It wasn’t very populated, only ran into one family on the trail the whole time we were out there. Saw some sort of varmint along the trail but still have no idea what it was, it scampered away too quickly before I could get a good look but my money is on that it was a fox.

 

 

The rock formation at the end of the road by the trailhead.

The “Needles.” The Needles district is named after these cedar mesa sandstone spires you can see in the distance..

Zooooooom!

 

Little rock towers or cairns mark the trail along the top of the sandstone. Theoretically you can see bighorn sheep in the valley below… but not in the heat of mid-day when we were out there. Awesome view of mesas in the background.

 

Upper Little Spring Canyon.

 

I’m sure this raven just wanted to talk to Dan about the perks of the Subaru Outback.

After our hike we got back on the road, exited Canyonlands, and headed south on 191 toward Blanding, Bluff, Mexican Hat and our ultimate destination at the Valley of the Gods Bed & Breakfast. Our room was a converted root cellar that had a porch, living room, bathroom on the first floor, and a walk-out bedroom in the “cellar.” The B&B is completely off the grid, with wind and solar power. It was miles away from anything, and almost too relaxing.

Fun fact, the Bed & Breakfast sits at the bottom of the Moki Dugway, which is a notorious bit of road that climbs 1,200feet up the side of the mesa on 11% graded gravel roads. We were going to take the road the next morning because it’s the most direct route to Capital Reef but… nope. Our plans changed after the Pucker Pass incident and we decided to go the long way around. During the evening we could see headlights climbing the mesa every once in a while and figured those people had to have been totally bonks.

 

A view of our root cellar and one of the locals in the shade of the car.

 

We had a good time reading the previous entries in the guestbook. People like to overshare.

 

Mexican Hat’s namesake. The following pic is a close-up. Again, stupid rocks doing stupid balancing acts that just make you question physics.

 

 

Beautiful hillsides along the road to the B&B.

 

 

Front porch just before sunset.

 

A peek into the Valley of the Gods.

 

 

Sunset in the desert. Simply sunning.

 

 

 

 

That night we saw all the stars. When we weren’t freaking out at every little noise around us (it was pitch black… in the desert. Come on!) we stood there and gaped at the heavens. We saw shooting stars, satellites and the Milky Way. If we’d had reclining chairs I have no doubt we’d have stayed out there all night… if the scurrying of critters didn’t chase us away sooner.