Zion National Park: GoPro Style!

After hiking to Angel's Landing, we did a bit more exploring around Zion, and here is the video footage to prove that. Thanks to my talented and amazing husband for putting this video together! Enjoy!

Gorgeous Gorges Trip, Day 9

Spring Break day 9

Saturday, March 21, 2015

Blanding, UT to Holbrook, AZ

Canyon de Chelly National Monument and Petrified Forest National Park

Today started with a long, long drive. Our goal for the day was to drive from Blanding, UT to Holbrook, AZ, and visit Canyon de Chelly in Chinle on the way to break up the drive. We had done this drive before on last year's spring break, so we were prepared for how long and boring it was! Thankfully, we were back in radio signal and had a nice choice of radio stations to get us through the desert. :)

The view for the majority of the drive...

We had visited Canyon de Chelly together during spring break 2012, but back then we didn't even know it was a national monument - we were just going along with whatever the Navigator group was doing. We didn't remember a whole lot, so we decided it was worth revisiting. It was also about at the halfway point in our drive, so we were ready to stretch our legs and do a little hiking.

We started with a drive on the North rim. We went as far as the Antelope House Lookout, and walked along the canyon rim. Last time we were here, we only remember doing the short hike to the White House ruins, so it was fun to see a bit more of the park. It's a very interesting area, because although it is a national monument, it's on the Navajo reservation and many families live and work in the area. 

After that, we took a drive on the South side. This drive was more scenic as you could actually see the canyon from the road (the North drive is a ways from the canyon and we had to drive over a mile off of the North Rim Drive to the Antelope lookout). We stopped at the White House Ruins lookout and trailhead and decided to do the hike again.

The hike is 2.5 miles roundtrip, and descends steeply into the canyon, across the river, and to the base of the canyon wall with the White House ruins. Going down was easy, unless you keep reminding yourself that you have to walk back up. ;) The trail is made mostly of slick rock and switchbacks until you get to the bottom of the canyon.

The White House Ruins

We didn't really stop or take our time around here - we really just hiked down, took picture of the ruins, then walked up. No big deal, just a quick break from driving. As we were out of breath and nearing the end of the hike up the canyon, I told Curtis, "If we do this 18 more times then we'll be ready to hike the Grand Canyon!" 

His response was "You know that when we do the Grand Canyon, we're allowed to take breaks, right?"

Oh yeah, I was leading and I kept up a fast pace throughout the entire hike. I may have been sore and out of breath, but I was just happy that I was in shape enough to do this. I remember stopping so much last time I was here, and had no hiking experience at all!

Looking down at the White House Ruins from above.

Selfie!

After that, we finished up our drive on highway 191 and made it to Interstate 40. Our original plan was to just go to Holbrook, do some letterboxing, and take it easy, but it was only 2 in the afternoon at this point. We were planning on doing Petrified Forest National Park the next day, but since we had so much time left, we decided to do it today and save ourselves a few miles. 

I am so glad we decided to do this, because the clouds were just perfect today, and made the views of the Painted Desert so much better! We drove to Petrified, stopped at the visitor's center, and planned out our visit. The cool part about the Painted Desert is that they allow you to obtain permits and do your own back-country hiking. We didn't really have that kind of time and didn't feel up for it, but just knowing that they allow that is cool. Other than that though, there aren't any hikes longer than 2 miles, so we just decided to drive through and stop when we felt like it.

We stopped at a couple overlooks for the Painted Desert. I think this was my favorite part of the park - I just loved the bright, vibrant colors.

After this, we continued the drive south through the park. To be honest, the drive is...a little boring for quite a ways. There are interesting parks and overlooks, but for a good portion of the drive, all you can see is...scrub land. It was weird to us that all this could be considered a National Park. It just didn't measure up to every other park we'd seen! But once we took the side roads to different places, it would get to be more interesting. This park isn't like any other, that's for sure.

Another favorite stop was at the Blue Mesa Trail. It's a mile long loop trail that takes you through a badland-looking area...except it's a bluish-purplish color! It was an easy hike and we really enjoyed it. We finally started to see petrified wood lying all around. 

At the beginning of the trail - it doesn't look blue yet...

See the blue and purple now? It was so pretty!

This log is 110 feet long!

The Jasper Forest overlook

See all the petrified wood in this picture?

Curtis lies on the wood to demonstrate how long it was :)

After making it through the 26 mile drive through the park, we stopped at the museum at the end and learned a few things about the area, and how petrified wood is made. Oh yeah, and the skull in the above picture? That was found in Chinle. Crazy!

Beautiful, polished petrified wood

We finished our visit by wandering around the Long Logs trail behind the museum. We had been debating which park was more interesting - this one or Arches - and this last trail might have helped Petrified pull ahead just that much more. There was SO MUCH petrified wood all around!

However, remember what I said about how everything we saw on vacation can be summed up by saying "Cool Rocks"? Petrified wood is also just a cool rock. It is interesting how they are formed, and even more interesting that there is so much of it right here in Arizona! But yes, all we did on vacation is see Cool Rocks and Gorgeous Gorges. That's probably pretty typical though if you're traveling anywhere in the Southwest!

After this, we drove from the South entrance of the park to Holbrook. But we were not done seeing petrified wood...it was mind blowing how much we saw for sale along the side of the road!

My favorite part about Holbrook, AZ: The dinosaurs along the side of the road. :)

All of our exciting maps/newsletters from the parks we visited!

We made it to Holbrook, settled in at our last hotel, and walked to Denny's for dinner. (2nd Denny's on vacation? Yeah, yeah...we just really like breakfast food!) It's always sad when you know a vacation is coming to the end. What made this better though was knowing that (1) we got our Charlotte back the next day and (2) We have another trip planned in a month!

Day 9 Wrap Up: Drove 300 miles, hiked 4 miles, found 1 letterbox.

Gorgeous Gorges Trip, Day 8

Spring Break Day 8

Friday, March 20, 2015

Moab to Blanding, Utah

Canyonlands National Park

We had officially been on vacation for a week now. We had done so much hiking and exploring and were starting to wear out. But we still had one more national park in Utah to see - Canyonlands National Park! Neither of us had been here before, and we honestly didn't hear much about it from anyone else, so it was kind of the wild card here. We decided to take it easy, not wear ourselves out today, and just enjoy it as much as we could.

Canyonlands is a very large park that is split into 3 sections by the rivers that flow through: Islands in the Sky to the North, Needles in the Southeast, and The Maze to the West. It is impossible to drive from one part of the park to the other, and going to the Maze is only possible by backpacking. As fun as backpacking sounded, we had only set aside one day for this park, so it was out of the question. We decided to visit the Needles district because it was on our way back to Arizona.

It was really starting to warm up, so we probably would have benefitted from leaving much earlier than we did, but after our early morning the day before we felt like we deserved to sleep in. The drive from Moab to the visitor's center was over 1 ½ hours long, and there were significantly less people on the drive and in the park. We stopped in the visitor's center to find the best way to see the park today.

What we learned is that this park is excellent for backpacking and ATV-ing, but not necessarily for day visits. I took a look at the list of hikes in the area, and saw that they had a couple "Easy hikes" that were less than 2 miles, and then several "Strenuous hikes" that were 8+ miles. It seemed that everything worth seeing was 10+ miles of hiking. The one trail that had been recommended to us was Chesler Park, and so we decided to do an in-and-out hike rather than doing the 11 mile loop. As fun as it would have been, it was already after 10 and the temperature was creeping up.

We drove on a gravel road to the Elephant Hill Trailhead and started on the trail. One of the first comments made about the trail was "More primitive than the Arches primitive trail!" Thankfully it was never too steep and the uphill sections never lasted too long. A lot of the trail was walking along slick rock and following cairns, and I was really growing fond of this type of trail. It's not something we get to hike on often in Tucson!

When we set out, our original intention was just to do a 5 mile hike round trip to the Needles Overlook on Chesler park trail, but as we were going we noticed that there was a side trail we could take to make it an 8 mile loop trail, and decided as long as we were here we should just do it! We made it to the overlook after one last steep section. 

It was on this day where I came to the realization that everything we had seen on vacation could be summarized in 2 words: Cool Rocks. After having seen 4 other national parks before this one, it was kind of underwhelming and harder to get excited about. No offense Canyonlands...I'm sure if we had done the trip in reverse, it could have had a better chance at impressing us. And to be fair, we probably missed some pretty cool sights by not wanting to hike more than 10 miles.

After stopping at the overlook, we continued on the loop trail. It took us through this large open area of "scrub land." Curtis said that he's pretty sure this is what the Veldt in Africa looks like...large open areas with rock formations in the distance. It was an easy trail, just hot without any shade. We didn't see anyone for quite a while on this part.

Snow capped mountains peeking out at us.

The trail looped around through the scrub area and returned to the slick rock. This was all easy and we were able to move along quickly. 

The most exciting part of this trail was when we found this deep cave-like thing. It was just this narrow path that went in a ways before ending with being closed off. There was a narrow split at the top with light shining through. Even Curtis isn't sure what to call it, but it was exciting and much cooler inside. We stopped here for lunch.

The light shining through the top of the "cave"

After the cave, the trail met up with a wash, and we followed the wash back to where the loop ended, then hiked back to our Jeep. There were more people on this part of the trail. It was surprising to me how often we were passing other hikers - I didn't even realize how fast we were going, or was everyone else just walking really slow?

A very narrow section of trail

After we reached the Jeep, we decided to call it a day in Canyonlands, and knew that if we ever came back we should prepare for backpacking, and do so in the spring or fall and not in the heat of the summer! As we drove the 50 mile stretch back to highway 191, we stopped at a few more places to letterbox.

Newspaper Rock

Another awesome sight of the day was Newspaper Rock, which is 13 miles West of highway 191 on the road to Canyonlands. The rock shows petroglyphs from cultures dating back over 1500 years ago, and all the way to this century. It was definitely the coolest petroglyph site we've seen in our travels!

We finished our drive for the day to Blanding, Utah. There weren't very many restaurants around us, but there happened to be a Chinese restaurant right next to our hotel. We decided to walk over and have dinner at 5:30...and long story short, 3 hours later we were back in our hotel room, famished and ready to dig in to our takeout. Who knew that it'd take so long to get dinner in Blanding? Maybe because it was a Friday night, at possibly the only restaurant within over 60 miles, and there were only 3 servers working? Oh well. At the end of the day, we were fed and happy, and ready for the last 2 days of our vacation.

Day 8 Wrap Up: Hiked 9 miles (8 in Canyonlands, 1 for letterboxing) Drove 175 miles

Highlight: the cave-like thing!