From the Grand Canyon we drove northeast toward Utah. This was the best day of driving for sure. It featured the sunrise over the Grand Canyon and a nice meander through Monument Valley. The landscape of southeastern Utah is amazing - beautiful red rock monoliths everywhere.
Below is a bad picture of monument valley taken from the car.
Our first stop was Arches. It was too hot to do a great deal of hiking, but we did a couple of the shorter loops around balanced rock, double arch, and delicate arch.
Balanced Rock:
Delicate Arch:
And here are a bunch of other arches for which I do not know the names.
In the afternoon we headed to the Island in the Sky district of Canyonlands. Island in the Sky is a broad, flat mesa set among the canyons, and is the portion of the park best suited to casual visitors. Much of the park requires a four-wheel drive vehicle.
The canyons surrounding the mesa are very impressive in size. Not as wide or as deep as the area around Grand Canyon National Park, but still quite impressive.
It was about 98 degrees at Arches and Canyonlands, but our campground was amazing. It took about 45 minutes of driving a mountain on a bumpy gravel road, but it was worth it. The site was located on a mountain just outside Moab. It was in a birch forest near tiny Warner Lake. The altitude gain was sufficient that as soon as we got out of the car we both donned pants and jackets, which felt amazing after a day of extreme heat.
that thing is definitely about to fall over
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