~Canyonlands National Park-Day 1~

Another incredible day!   We are now in Utah and for a couple of days we stayed in Moab - what a booming, little town.   It was spring break so the town was packed!  The campgrounds, the grocery store, restaurants, gas stations etc... were all full. The weather was great too, so it was a perfect place to spend a few days.

One day we decided to go to Canyonlands National Park.  This park is huge and is divided into 3 sections.   We chose to do the "Needles" first.   This is a photo of Church Rock just across from the entrance to the park. The Visitor Centre is about 34 miles off the main road, but the scenery is spectacular!

We stopped off at Newspaper Rock on the way to the Visitor Centre.

Once we got all our maps etc....we chose the hikes we wanted to do.  

This is the "Roadside Ruin" trail that led us to an ancestral Puebloan granary.

This is the "Cave Spring" trail that led us to a historic cowboy camp.  Very cool!  We had to climb 2 ladders and went through several caves.

Next on to "Pothole Point" which gave us amazing view of the Needles.

On all the trails there are these cute rock "cairns" - kinda like inukshuks that show you where to go next.   You are often just walking right along the slick rock so it is the only way to let you know where to go.   We decided on some of the longer hikes that we most definitely would have been lost if not for the cairns!

Everything is SO big - you can't quite see it in the photos, but it is SO beautiful!   This is the "Slickrock Trail" which took us over the rocks and had several incredible viewpoints!

More jumping fun!

Scott did NOT come near the edge of many of the viewpoints!  We were SO high up!

We spent 6 hours driving and then hiking through the park - it was INCREDIBLE!