Cheryl & Larry's 2017 Journey

Canyonlands National Park (established 1964) preserves a wilderness of rocks at the heart of the Colorado Plateau with canyons carved by the Green and Colorado Rivers.  Years of rain and gravity have created canyons, mesas, buttes, fins, arches & spires. The park is divided into 3 very different regions. Island in the Sky is located in the northwest about 40 miles from Moab via UT 313, The Needles is located southwest of Moab about 80 miles via UT 211, and the Maze lies on the western park boundary which is only accessible via remote roads.  Island in the Sky Merrimac (Left) & Monitor are seen from UT 313. The stand 600' tall and are named after Civil War battleships.  They are composed of Entrada Sandstone, the same soft stone which creates arches. Paintbrush growing from a small crack in the rock Views into Shafer Canyon, 2000 ft deep. . Larry would like to drive this road which descents down the canyon wall, no guardrail!!! Road has b...

Arrived in Moab, UT on May 3. Moab will be our camping home site while we tour Arches and Canyonlands NP's, Deadhorse State Park and Moab in general.  Moab is known for its bike and off-road vehicle trails.  Will see how far "off" road we can get with the Tahoe! Population of the town is little over 5000 but there are at least that many visitors here right now.  Arches National Park - Just a short 4 mile drive north of Moab, where the park accommodates over 1.5 million visitors each year.  There are over 2000 arches in the park, opening has to be minimum of 3 ft. long to be called an arch, 43 arches have collapsed since'77 (Good news there are NOT 2000 pics of arches).  The park lies atop an underground salt bed that is responsible for all the rock formations.  During the millions of years of flooding, rain, wind, etc. debris has compressed as rock. Salt under pressure is unstable and gave way to the raising rock. The stone within the park is Entrada Sand...