Day 20- June 19
Now this day started early but I thought we could’ve got on the road a little sooner, due to Brandon and Savannah taking showers in the morning. Nonetheless we were rockin by about 9am. Our first feature was a drive straight up to Interstate 70 then headed east and cut over through to Moab. This took about an hour and a half.
Moab is where Arches and Canyonlands National Parks are located. The goal for the day was to see Dead Horse Point and Canyonlands’ ‘Eye In The Sky’ overlooks, as well as explore Moab and obtain a campsite. This was a large day. Our first stop in the morning was a breakfast place called ‘The Love Muffin Cafe’ in Moab. This was pretty expensive but overall a great place to start for hiking fuel.
Since this is going to be our largest city of the trip next to Las Vegas, we decided to get some groceries for the next couple days. From that point we headed over to Dead Horse Point and Canyonlands. These parks feature a vast amount of land that has been cut through millions of years by the Green and Colorado Rivers. These rivers merge in Canyonlands to form the three different sections of the park. It features multiple overlooks that view canyons for hundreds of miles so it seems.
We stopped at the visitor center and filled our water jugs up which is always a priority in the middle of the desert like that. No hiking was involved but we drove all way to the end of the road to reach the overlooks. There’s actually one overlook that’s very famous called Mesa View arch which has an arch that once looking under you can see the entire landscape and provides a brilliant photo op.
I have a funny story however. When I was on top of the arch, I was drinking from my LifeStraw water bottle, and from what I understood after using it a few times if you need to filter it by taking it out and slinging the water in a reverse motion through the straw. So as I was standing on the cliff enjoying the view, I unscrewed the cap and started slinging the water over the cliff. Little did I know that the connection of the straw to the Cap was not very secure. The Lifestraw separated from the cap and went right over the cliff. This made me look like a jackass in front of about 1000 people trying to observe the beauty. This is probably the most embarrassing part of the trip but nonetheless looking back it was pretty funny.
From this overlook we decided to continue backwards to where we started and take a side road to Dead Horse Point State Park. This was a little expensive for viewing the same plot of land from the opposite point, however this is where the film ‘Thelma and Louise’ drove their car over the cliff in a famous scene. This was a beautiful park but very small in the sense of what you could do besides observe the beauty, and for $20 it seems a little steep for just a picture. That was also per car so actually it cost $40. Nonetheless as you can see from the pictures it proved to be a beautiful shot with these weird phosphate pools in the distance providing a unique blue amongst the landscape.
At this point once we decided that we were done here and we knew we had about an hour drive south on Highway 191 to reach out campsite destination. Our goal was to get to the Needles district of canyonlands which was about a 70 mile drive. The Needles District feature large petrified columns and unique colors and barren landscapes to hike. It is about 30 miles off the main road to get there. The drive getting there it’s pretty spectacular as you drive along a huge red rock Cliff on the bottom and in the distance you can see many mountains which resemble Monument Valley.
It was very out there though, and few designated campsites. So we were definitely taking a risk hoping with there was camping available. Fortunately we were able to find a spot and put our tents down. Even though we were tired me, Ashley, and a couple others decided to keep hiking once we set up camp, as there was a trail attached to the main hike of Canyonlands’ Needles district called Chester Park, but due to the light restriction and the sunset we could not finish the hike.
We thought we would be able to complete it the next day but the next day turned out to be very busy as well. We cooked dinner which ended up being pork chops and then went to bed. We played cards and threw a frisbee for a while to entertain us until it got dark. The night sky proved to be incredible as we were many miles away from civilization. We ended up getting to bed around 930 so we can could be ready for a big day at Arches National Park tomorrow.
June 19 Expenses
35.00 breakfast moab
6.88 snack
6.47 grocery
106.55 outdoor world burner and propane
Total expenses – 154.90
MILES DRIVEN – 282