Moab (66 - under 71)

Autumn was growing deeper and it was more noticeable in our Moab campground. The remaining leaves on the trees were in their last hues of yellow and orange and the increasing winds ensured the trees would soon be stripped bare.

Moab in the distant valley floor with
the road north to the National Parks

We googled the weather to see what we were likely to have while in Moab and to find out whether Lake Tahoe had received the front that was predicted a few days ago. Our decision to spend only 2 nights in Tahoe had paid off. Lake Tahoe had received over 30 cms of snow and heavier falls were predicted for today and tonight, in all they expected further drops of more than 60 cms during the next 24 hours. Snow was down to the water’s edge where only days ago we had enjoyed a picnic in sunny, clear weather while the girls played in the sand.

Moab was in for a “mixed bag” of weather as some days were to be sunny, some cloudy, some rainy and even light snow showers. Overnight temps would be below freezing, but only just. When looking at the weather and planning our itinerary for Moab, we decided we should see Canyonlands National Park before Arches National Park as Canyonlands was both further away and also at a higher altitude. The forecast was quite good for tomorrow but increasingly colder and more uncomfortable for the days following, and the potential for Canyonlands to be covered in cloud couldn’t be ignored.

The drive to Canyonlands (68) required us to back-track about 25 kms to the turnoff, then drive a further 60 odd kms to the Grand View at the end of the Canyonlands road. The visitor’s centre was located about 8 kms past the turnoff and before arriving there, we stopped about 10 times to take photos of these wonderful red rocks and cliffs. What lay ahead if this looks so good here we pondered?

Once we arrived at the visitor’s centre, we discovered another jewel we needed to see, a place called Dead Horse Point State Park (67) which was only slightly off the road to the Canyonlands Grand View point. The Point sits about 2000 feet above the winding Colorado River and provides breathtaking views of the canyon country.

The neck

The most common legend of how the Point got its name is that cowboys, around the turn into the 20th century used to herds of wild mustangs across the mesa and onto the Point which is connected to the mesa by a thin “neck” only 30 metres wide. By fencing off the neck they could leave the horses in a natural corral. The cowboys then chose the best horses to sell, leaving the rest on the mesa. Either the horses go trapped or the cowboys left the fence in place and the horses died of thirst, leaving their bleached bones behind.

We spent quite a bit of time in the visitor’s centre watching a DVD and looking at various displays explaining times long past, then drove to the Point and walked around trails (some of which came a little too close to the edge for me - I’m not a great one for heights!) gazing at the wonderful views.

Indeed, at one point I was looking down a cliff at least 1,500 feet high watching a small car negotiating a steep, winding gravel road to the bottom and could hear the wheels skidding as they applied their brakes again and again. There is no fencing on this winding road and nothing to break their fall if they went off the road – the sight and sound was enough to give me butterflies in my stomach, and I was just watching.

At another time I was watching a man walk around a 2’ wide ledge the corner of a sandstone butte to get a photo, with nothing for him to grip or hold to secure him from falling 2000 feet to the valley floor. His wife was unsuccessfully yelling at him to not take the risk, but he went anyway. A few minutes after he returned, I was chatting to him when a very, very strong gust of wind nearly knocked both of us off our feet.

Gravel stones were striking us like bullets and drew blood from his legs as he was only wearing shorts.

The wind only lasted a minute or so but I couldn’t help thinking how lucky he was that that wind didn’t come when he walked that narrow ledge around the butte. After I returned to our car, Grace and the girls were nearly in tears as they thought the car was going to be blown over – the girls were apparently screaming during the height of the winds as gravel stones and sticks were hitting the Chev.

In all our stop there lasted almost 2 hours and we still had to drive about 30~40 kms to get to Canyonlands. As we neared the last section of Grand View Point road before the lookout, the road narrowed and became quite twisty. However, once at the Point the views were breathtaking and understandably, the area is often described as “Utah’s Grand Canyon”. It is nowhere near as large but many films have been produced there in the guise of being set in the Grand Canyon. Apparently the smaller scale makes filming less problematic.

Water and gravity is this land’s architect, cutting flat layers of sedimentary rock into hundreds of canyons, mesas, buttes, fins, arches and spires. The area has three main sections, partitioned by the Green and Colorado Rivers and they are the Maze on the west, the Needles on the east and where we were standing on the north is called the Island in the Sky.

Our views from the Grand View lookout across canyon after canyon stretched almost 100 miles. Island in the Sky is a broad mesa wedged between both the Green and Colorado rivers and the spot is Canyonland’s observation point. Closest to the mesa’s edge is the White Rim, a nearly continuous sandstone bench about 1,200 feet below. Another 1,000 feet below White Rim are the rivers, shadowed by sheer canyon cliffs – beyond them lie the Maze and the Needles.



The Three Gossips



Late afternoon and the accompanying chill came far too quickly, and as we had a drive of over 80 kms to negotiate, we headed towards home. The weather had been very kind to us once again, some grey clouds had threatened rain but none eventuated, however tonight was expected to bring a nasty, cold change.



Balancing rock



After rising the next day and peeking out the windows we discovered a very cold morning (below zero), but the sun was successfully breaking through trying to make fools of the weather forecasters. We were initially going to have today as a school day, but a quick change of plans was needed to capitalise on our change in fortunes.

We headed off to the Arches National Park and if the weather turned bad, we had quite an easy drive home. The entry fees to all the National Parks had been pre-purchased before leaving Australia (an annual pass), so essentially it didn’t matter how many times we entered the park.

Water and ice, extreme temperatures and underground salt movement are responsible for the sculptured rock scenery of Arches National Park. On a reasonably clear, blue-sky day such as we had today it’s difficult to imagine such violent forces, or the 100 million years of erosion that created this region – one of the world’s greatest densities of natural arches, over 2000 in all ranging in size from a 3-foot opening (the minimum considered an arch) to the longest, Landscape Arch measuring 306 feet from base to base.

The park lies atop of an underground salt bed, thousands of feet thick in places and the salt was deposited across the Colorado Plateau 300 million years ago when a sea flowed into the region and eventually evaporated. Over millions of years, residue from floods, winds and the oceans that came and went blanketed the salt bed. The debris was compressed as rock, at one time possibly a mile thick.

Salt under pressure is unstable, and the salt bed lying below Arches was no match for the weight of this thick cover of rock. The salt layer shifted, buckled, liquefied and repositioned itself thrusting the rock layers upward as domes and whole sections fell into the cavities. Over time, water seeped into superficial cracks, joins and folds. Ice formed in the fissures, expanding and pressurising the rocks breaking off bits and pieces.

Wind later cleaned out the loose particles leaving a series of free-standing fins. Wind and water then attacked these fins until the cementing material in some gave way and chunks of rock tumbled out. Many of these damaged fins collapsed. Others, hard enough and balanced, survived despite missing sections and these became the famous arches.

We wandered about these lands and arches, spellbound for hours taking photo after photo. There were many walks and trails to various vista opportunities throughout the park, but you would need to spend days there to do this.

One arch that was of particular interest to us was Delicate Arch. This was Utah’s visual focal point and is featured on most tourist brochures and displayed on Utah’s vehicle registration plates. There are two ways to see the arch, one far more strenuous than the other.

A road leads to a view point on the least strenuous viewing point but you still need to walk several hundred metres along a path and up steps that climb about 80 feet. From there you can see Delicate Arch, but you need a camera with a good zoom as the arch is more than a kilometre away.

Delicate Arch

The more strenuous route requires you to enter from a different location and walk a round trip of about 3 miles (almost 5 kms) - you need to climb over 500 feet in elevation over huge rocky slopes, quite steep in places but not dangerous. We all chose the more difficult route, although Meryla decided to wait it out in the Chev.

Our stamina was certainly tested with the walk, but frankly we all needed the exercise and it took us about 1 ¼ hours to climb the path to see the arch. Rochelle, at 8 years of age and still only 20 kilos fared remarkably well but needed to sit down a few times (none of us disagreed with these breaks – I needed to lower the heart rate down to 200 or so) and vowed to give up, although she didn’t.

The last 100 metres was around a corner of a mountain edge that had a walkway carved into the rock wall, and the strong winds made this feel far more dangerous than it probably was – it certainly made us all cling to the wall and I wasn’t game to look over the edge. Now that I’ve looked at the photos we took at that point, I’m so disappointed that they don’t reflect the danger we felt when negotiating our Everest!

A natural amphitheatre provides an excellent viewing platform for admiring Delicate Arch. Chantelle, Rochelle and I walked around the outer rim to stand beside the arch for a photo. The centre of the amphitheatre sloped down to...as far as...I don’t know! I tried peering down as far as I could see but my nerves got the better of me – all I could imagine was one of the girls slipping or tripping and there was nothing at all to stop their fall to the bottom, wherever that may be. As we slowly made our way round to the arch I was holding them so tightly I probably caused the blood to drain from their hands. Grace took the photos and video and I was a happy man when we were finally heading back down so a safer level – the walk downhill to the car only took us 55 minutes.

We left the park just after sunset and once the sun’s rays have lost direct contact with you, the cold evening air really bites, chilling you to the core. We decided to buy dinner in a restaurant on the way home and found a lovely pub with a roaring fire in Moab.

The next couple of days were spent indoors doing schoolwork, only broken the day before we left by a snow shower. Chantelle and Rochelle got rugged up and had a great deal of fun trying to catch the snowflakes in their mouth and a container they took outside.

Watching the snow falling made me more concerned about the condition of the roads the following day as we headed south to Monument Valley. The campground manager assured me that despite another mountain range to climb, the season was too early for icy roads to be a problem, and that by mid-morning the roads would be fine.