The Wandering Adventurers: May 18 & 19

May 18
Driving day today going east toward Canyonlands NP and Arches NP. We were in and out of the rain along another pretty scenic road. We crossed over the Colorado River where Lake Powell begins. We had a quick stop at Natural Bridges National Monument. We took the time to see the film at the Visitor Center and then drove the eight mile scenic road with three stops to see three of the five largest natural bridges in the world. It was raining so we didn’t linger at the viewpoints. The bridges were first named President, Senator, and Congressman. Then the names were changed to Augusta, Caroline and Edwin. As the park was enlarged to include Puebloan structures, the bridges were given more appropriate Hopi names. The largest bridge has a span of 268 feet.
We drove on to the small town of Monticello for two nights. We are in a dippy little RV park but got the laundry done and snuggled in for the night.

Natural Bridges
You have toreally look to see the bridge.

May 19
Another cloudy and cold morning but we kept with our plans and drove up to the Needles area of Canyonlands NP. We ended up hitting the weather perfectly. We even had a little blue sky mixed in with very dramatic dark skies in the distance. By the time we were driving home we had sleet, rain, and hail! How lucky can we get! The drive into the park from Hwy 191 was beautiful. We drove through picturesque canyons with wide sweeping valleys. The formations were really different with Needle formations in the making plus formations that reminded me of the pinnacles in Monument Valley, and a very pretty ranch with green fields and cattle crossing the road. Still outside of the park we stopped at Newspaper Rock. A large slab of red rock covered with dark natural varnish was covered with petroclyphs that have been collected over a 2,000 year span. It was the most amazing petroclyph sight we have seen so far.
On to the Visitor Center for information on the scenic road, the small museum and the film. Working our way out to the end of the road on Cedar Mesa, our first stop was Potholes with a half mile walk over huge boulders with potholes from erosion everywhere. Small tadpoles, shrimp of various types and snails live in these water filled potholes at various times of the year. It had just rained so even the smallest pothole were filled with water. We looked and looked but the only living thing we saw was a group of snails. We had nice views of the Needles and mushroom formations. The Needles are red rock pinnacles that have been separated from each other by erosion and the mushroom formation have hard rock on the top that is eroding slower than that underneath making them look like giant mushrooms. The sun was actually shining, so we drove out Elephant Hill Road to have a picnic. We love the dirt roads where you are right down in the canyons. The mushroom rocks were all around us. Last was the short Cave Spring hike off another dirt road. The walk led us past a cowboy camp set up under a large rock overhang. They had used it from the 1920’s to 1975 when the park no longer allowed them to run their cattle. They pretty much left everything there. The ranch was over a million acres and the largest in Utah at the time running up to 10,000 cattle. As we followed the trail another large rock overhang had springs and was home to early Puebloans. We had fun climbing up wood ladders to continue the trail over more pothole boulders. The distant views along the way were gorgeous. We got back to the car just before it started to pour. We had one more short hike we could have taken but decided stay dry and head home. Dark clouds encircled us and we felt sorry for those just arriving to the park. The park has more dirt roads only for 4x4’s than paved roads. We could only imagine how much fun it would be to drive into the back country. We will explore the northern part of the park later in the week.