The Canyonlands Trip I Took Before We Moved

I just have some really cool pictures of Canyonlands that I need to put where people can see them because they are too amazing to be wasted on my hard drive.

My friend Gary and I found the very last camping spot in Moab on a Friday night (literally, we drove around for a long time trying to find a spot, and we got amazingly lucky) and this trail called the Portal Trail led away from the parking spot we had. It was almost sunset so we figured if we hurried we could check it out before it got dark. It led to this overlook above Moab, very impressive.

On Saturday morning we drove from Moab to the Needles district in Canyonlands. We stopped at "Newspaper Rock" and took some pictures. The petroglyphs were cooler to look at than I thought they would be. These strange pictures tell a story we can only guess at... Pretty interesting.

How about a 2000 foot drop? We hiked to the top of this cliff overlooking a valley that would eventually become Elephant Canyon, our eventual destination which ends at Druid Arch. All of the canyons here are ringed with the rock formations you can see in the backroung, straight-up pillars of rock called "Needles".

This is Gary at a cool part of the trail where the canyon we were following got so narrow that we had to squeeze through sideways in order for our packs to fit.

The trail to Druid Arch got pretty extreme in some places, so there are ladders installed to make it safer.

Blood sweat and tears finally got us to Druid Arch. We had to climb a boulder field up about 1500 foot from the canyon floor to get to this spot, which led to our next picture,

This is Elephant Canyon. The trail follows the gorge you can see down the middle until you hit the boulder field that takes you up to the open area above the gorge, and once you hit that, BOOM you have this amazing view you can look back across.

I was fortunate to survive our descent. Rather than jump the boulder field back down, we slid down this rock wall.

It was one of the more fun trips I have been on. Canyonlands is really, really amazing. If you ever get a chance, you should go. We spent one night on the trail is all, but there is enough trail in there and opportunity to explore to keep you busy for a week if you wanted.