Canyonlands National Park - September 19th

 Today we did two hikes and a short viewpoint walk in Canyonlands National Park.  It is a lesser known park than Arches, but has a beauty all its own.

The first hike we did was the Murphy Trail.  I took some pictures of the flowers on the trail.  The cactus you expect, but the yellow and purple flowers have been in many of the desert settings and thrive and I haven’t given them their moment in the spotlight.

It may be hard to see in the picture but the “needles” on the cactus were quite long.  Wouldn’t want to be poked by it.

The trees and some of the plants sure look like they are growing out of stone. They take advantage of every crevice.

We went part way on the trail and saw some great views.  However, we turned around when we saw other people ahead walking the trail and didn’t like how steep and high drop off it was.  Enjoy what you see along the trail and listen to your brain as to when to stop.  Here are picks from as far as we went.

To give an idea why we stopped the wall straight ahead is where the trail was.

The layers and the indented area are art in themselves

The second hike was the Aztec Butte Trail.  There were two different buttes, one had an Aztec structure and one was for the views.  We started with the view butte.  It was a climb on rock up to the top for the view.  We did a little over 3/4 of the way up and that was our limit.  It was hard to tell where to go from where we stopped and it was even more straight up than the part we already did.  I had already bear climbed some on the way up and was done playing bear.  On the way down I scooted on my butt for a bit as I was not comfortable standing and walking.  Dave said it was a self expansion hike. 

Me walking to the butte that challenged me

Picture from as high up as we went.

This is the view from the height we got to.

If you look in the upper white layer you will see a person on each side of greenery (tree).  That is the tree where we chilled and then turned around.  Not too shabby

After that we climbed up on the butte that had the Aztec structure, but you had to go down and across an area that was quite steep.  At that point between having already done the really steep butte and there being 4 people in the area of the building and not much room to view it, we passed on actually seeing it.  The views were really good from the top of the butte though.  

View from the butte

Information and a picture about the Aztec bldg.  You should be able to click and enlarge if interested,

This was a formation when I went down to try to see the Aztec bldg.  Just thought it was really cool.

We then stopped at Spring overlook on our way out.  This area had views looking down in the canyon.  There was a gentleman looking over the edge and said he only saw 2 bodies.  It was pretty funny, though his wife didn’t think so.  From here you could also see the dirt roads you could take down into the canyon.  There is 100 miles of roads in the bottom of the canyon.  Lots of places in the area rent jeeps or provide jeep tours.  We were watching one jeep go down very slowly.  If I were the driver, I wouldn’t see much.  If I were the passenger, I would be car sick.  We are just not very high adventure people. 

There is a jeep on the road between the two lower rock formations.  Yes, it’s the dot.

We then headed to town to fill up on gas for our travel day to Salt Lake tomorrow and stopped at Moab Brewery for a beer and pretzel.

In Salt Lake we are visiting friends and going to a Lantern Festival, so will most likely hear from me again on Sunday.  

Til next time…