Monument Valley 2

We were up early to catch our tour - for 3.5 hours in the "bus" - back of a truck with seats. Our guide was Carol, a Navajo who handled the truck and the dialogue extremely well. We hadn't realized until we got back just how much red dust we were collecting in our hair, our ears, our clothes - every where! (Laurie had an interesting description...) This site, with the hole very high up, also had petroglyphs along the walls.

Monument Valley 1

We went to stay at Goudlings - a great campsite and centre for tours of Monument Valley. The "mitten" formation is pretty famous and was used in several movies, particularly with John Wayne. The campsite has a museum about the Gouldings and how they got Hollywood interested in making movies here. We even got to watch "Stagecoach" and you could see the places where they filmed it. It is in Navajo nation - and they were often extras pretending to be Apaches or whatever was needed for the movies.

the Needles to Monument Valley

These pictures are all taken within 2 hours heading south to Monument valley. Amazing variety of landscapes!

The needles 4

More pictures of the rock surfaces - Graeme would have loved it on his bike!

The Needles 3

This is another hike that we did. Under and around and over the mushroom. There was a section underneath the rock overhang that cowboys had used as a range station and then another section had pictograms from the ancient Pueblos. Then we climbed ladders and went over the top of the formation. Fun!

The Needles 2

The needles - seen in the distance, are probably a lot like the formations at Bryce Canyon but we never got any closer to figure it out. I took several pictures of the sliprock terrain, for Graeme as he would like to be mountain biking in this area. The rock is not slippery at all, it is like sand paper, so you can easily walk up or down steep portions.
The hat formation was further south - Mexican hat!

South of Moab to The Needles

The Needles, are another section of the Canyon Lands National Parks. Did I mention that Susan and Rick had suggested we purchase a yearly pass for the National Parks. It has more than paid for itself now, as we have been to many National Parks. The needles could only be accessed by a very long road in, about 1 hour, and then it would be a 6 hour hike to actually get close to them. Many of the formations looked like mushrooms. This picture is of a campsite - right under a rock! Too bad we weren't planning to camp there - it would have been really fun (but the campground was full). There has been both rain and snow so the flowers are blooming. We did several hikes, enjoyed "playing" on the rocks.

Arches NP 5

I missed these pictures earlier. the double arches, that look like the lone Ranger mask, were neat. This was the primitive hike we did, all the way around them. Can you see the person standing in the 2 arch pictures?

Arches NP4

this was the last hike, Barb did alone. The double arch was quite unique, and you could climb right up to it. I "dubbed" the formation the 3 wise men (or women). The really good news was that we returned the rental car about 2:30 and the truck was ready to roll. The bird (Magpie?)was waiting for us at the campsite. We are now all put back together. Laurie got the truck back under the camper, all the connections made, refilled the water, emptied the other tanks and we are ready to roll in the morning. We are definitely heading south - hope to find some warmer weather! Probably Gouldings Monument Valley tomorrow.

Arches NP3

More arches!

Arches NP 2

This park did indeed have an abundance of natural arches. Many geological explanations - and one nifty picture someone had taken as one of the arches thinned itself out even further by dropping a major chunk. Most of the arches were at least a 15 minute - up to 1/2 hour walk in and then out so we got our exercise today!

Arches National Park

Our little rental car doesn't take the place of the BFRT but it was quite a pleasure to zip around the park. We did 3 trails, one was "primitive" and really felt like hiking. Not too many people, a few showers and a cold wind.

Canyonlands National park

After we left Dead horse SP we carried on to Canyon lands National Park, the north end. We managed to get to most of the view points, but the rain was all around us, or on us. The rainbow was awesome - very broad with "all the colours of a rainbow!"

Dead Horse State Park (Utah)

We zipped around in our rental car. Up to Dead horse SP - would have been an awesome campsite but would have been a bigger problem to have been stuck there with a broken truck. Beautiful views from high up on the Mesa. Did a fairly strenuous hike but then the rains came. Picture of a very muddy Colorado River - probably because of all the rain we have been experiencing. And indeed the desert is starting to bloom.

sick truck!

Laurie had noticed a spray in the wheel wells a couple of days ago. He was monitoring it - and then there were drips left behind when we parked. On Easter Sunday we had to put in 2 more quarts of transmission fluid in and bought two more to get us down the road. By the time we got to Moab, it was a major leak - can you see the bucket under the truck? Then Laurie borrowed a wrench - he thought it was a loose fitting, but discovered a split line (maybe hitting the tumble weed?). within minutes the whole transmission was drained! Luckily by this time we had settled in to the KOA campsite. On Monday, we had the truck hauled to a garage and they said they could fix it Tuesday if the part arrived. So we rented a car and carried on with our exploration! Weird to be sleeping in the camper off the truck!

Capitol Reef 2

More changing scenery. A very pleasant drive to Moab. Even some I series highway. As we approached Moab we realized that there were thousands of jeeps. Apparently Moab was just finishing a "Jeep fest" - an annual rally of jeeps from all over North America - to go on back road expeditions. Apparently there were 1500 registered and more that were not!