Without not too many days left of my holiday, I had to start some planning and such I tried to go West a bit today. I therefore searched for a place to stay near the Zion National Park, such that I can start exploring it early in the morning. Thanks to hotels.com, which I used in the past days to find a location to stay, searching was easy and I found a pleasant room.
Today, I planned to do a bit of a full day hiking. At the visitor center, I got the hiking map and asked for distances. Of course, I did plan my day with a bit of generous tolerances in that respect. A good decision as I found out by the end of the day, when my GPS showed me the real distance. It kind of matched the information from the visitor center – in nautical miles though. The hike itself was quite spectacular. First the
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I did not expect too much from the “Capitol Reef National Park”, while it was mentioned in the flyer, that the colors are beautiful, I kind of thought I have seen many nice places in the past days, this cannot top it. It kind of did. However my first encounter, when I was inside the national park, was with Dave and his wife. Two hikers where standing on the side of the street and hoped for a ride. As they looked quite normal and quite
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What a strange place. When I was at Vernal UT, more precisely at the Tourist Information at Jenson UT, I got hold of a flyer, which advertised Goblin Valley State Park – in very small print actually. Luckily, that particular park was on my route today from Green River to Torrey. These very special geological formations, really look like from another world. As the state park seems to be relatively rarely visited – or the visitors behave – one can wander between the formations and
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After arriving at the “Capitol Reef National Park” and browsing through the visitor center, I decided to stay for two nights, in order to have enough time to explore this place. But where? As I had no phone connection or other internet access in the part, I drove towards Torrey and pulled out on the first gas station a bit outside the town, assuming this place should be fine for some kind of a connection. Indeed it was. Before I actually turned on the data
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Not that the attached pictures represent the entire town of Hanksville, a tiny town in Utah. But it looks like this community does preserve its “Old Town” quite well…
Time flies in this area. It was already around 4 pm, when I arrived at the trail head, which leads to the congruence of the colorado and green river. I planned to go there, to see how the green and reddish water mix or actually does not mix, but creates a two colored river. However, the path to that place is around 5 miles / 9 km. So I probably could have it made by daylight under the best circumstances, but the return trip would
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The way to the concurrence of the colorado river and the green river follows the base of the top layers of rocks. The “First Floor” is quite green and there are even some farmers taking advantage of the large area. In contrast the “Second Floor”, the top of the surrounding mountains, is quite arid and only plans and animals adapted to a desert like environment can survive. Here approximately 100 meter below the world looks quite different though.
A bit outside of Moab, one can find a short “Dino Track”. Directions to which are available a the local land management agency and basically involve driving into no mans land 15 miles north of Moab on a dirt road. Once there, there should be a short track, where dinosauric bones and petrified wood can be observed. However, the track is hardly visible and I just went past it on something like the “long loop” around two of those fancy mountains. That track, which took
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Its not that surprising, that lizards, snakes – yes I have seen some – or beetles can be found in the desert around Moab. There the waves are “frozen” into the sand or the sand even is wrapped in thin layers, like dry sheet of paper. Yet there seems to be an environment for a little frog to survive.
