Four of the Mighty Five

Moab, Utah: We spent a couple of nights at the Pack Creek Ranch, thirty minutes south of Moab. It was a lovely remote cabin, at the foot of the La Sal mountains, with two bedrooms, living room, fireplace, two baths, and laundry.

While in Utah we visited the “mighty five” Utah National Parks these past two days: Zion, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Arches, and Canyonlands. Capitol Reef was new to us. Zion, in our previous blog, was the first of these five national parks in Utah… so here is a snapshot of the other four…

Bryce Canyon

One looks down at the ‘hoodoos’ in the canyon at Bryce from the rim, or walks into miles of trails in this forest of stone. Unlike spires, hoodoos have variable thickness from erosion, making them look spooky and weird from close-up. It was a fun stop while traveling from Zion to Moab. While these limestone formations look small from Inspiration Point, these tall skinny spires of rock actually range in height from 5 feet to exceeding a ten story building. No where else in the world are there so many hoodoos, as here in Bryce Canyon.

Capitol Reef

This is halfway between Bryce and Moab, and adds another notch on our goal to visit all 59 National Parks. This park is amazing, with cliffs, canyons, domes, and arches… it is a geologic monocline – a 100 mile wrinkle in the earth. It’s just beautiful, and now it’s one of our favorites! Check out this pic of Sue sitting under Hickman Bridge arch! We hiked a 2 mile round-trip trail to see it. We will visit here again!!!

Arches

This national park has a magnificent road entryway up the mesa wall, then delights its visitors with hundreds of soaring pinnacles, massive fins, giant balanced rocks, and over 2,000 natural stone arches. We spent 90 minutes walking all around the north and south windows. Below is a pic of all four of us in front of the south window. This place is a red rock wonderland.

Canyonlands

This park is the gateway of canyons and buttes formed by the Colorado, Green, and other rivers, before it all becomes the Grand Canyon down in Arizona. It is divided into four regions by those rivers, and we visited the “Island In The Sky” region to see an awe-inspiring drop into the incredible depths of these primitive desert canyons. The road you see behind Ted crawls along a skinny edge of the mesa wall where the composition of rock changes, and eventually drops down to the canyon floor seen far below.

The “mighty five” red rock National Parks in Utah provide inspiration into our spirit and soul. It has been wonderful visiting all of these with Mike and Joanie Kernaghan. Our next stop for the weekend is the western side of the Rocky mountains near Grand Junction.

ST. TRAVELS