Red rock (Utah) 


Continued my travels to Utah where I planned to spend a few days exploring Arches, Canyonlands and Bryce Canyon parks. 

I drove through eastern and middle USA pretty quickly as I really wanted to spend some time in the rocky mountains area, especially in Utah. I have been in Colorado earlier so given my schedule I decided to spend most of my time in Utah. After Black Canyon I had a travel day to Moab. The distance was only about 300 Km so I stopped at Colorado monument park to get first taste of the strange landscape that was waiting for me - red rock in strange shapes.




Canyon in Colorado monument park


After spending some time in the park I continued to Utah. For the first 50 miles there was nothing to see, no towns, no farms, just almost flat wasteland. The fastest route to Moab would have been to follow I-70 as long as possible but I decided to escape the boring interstate and took road 128. The road follows Colorado river for the last 10-20 miles to Moab and was just astonishing! The river has carved a deep winding canyon through the red rock and the road follows the river in the same canyon. Trees and bushes line the river in yellow fall colors. This time I was really happy Hertz gave me a convertible and cruised slowly to Moab top down.



Colorado River and road 128 (Utah)

The next day I really started exploring Utah parks. First destination was Arches, best known from the "Delicate Arch", which is symbol for the whole state of Utah and is probably in every Western movie ever made.



Delicate arch - Arches national park in Utah



Balanced rock - another popular sight in Arches park


Arches gave me my first taste of the real strange formations and often mind starts playing tricks with the rocks - can you see the "faces" in the next picture?





After visiting Delicate Arch I took quite a long hike with several arch formations on the way and very nice about 5 miles long stretch down in the canyon and in the middle of the formations. The day was mostly cloudy but just before sunset the sky started getting clear and the setting sun colored everything with deep red hues. Look at the picture for some time - to me it looks like a some kind of "family" meeting..



Sunset - Arches park


Moab is the best home base for Arches and Canyonlands. It is a small mining town but today lives on tourism and has all the hotels and restaurants one needs. There are even two microbreweries serving very passable local beer.
 

Posted: Ke - Marraskuu 9, 2005 at 06:51 ap.          

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