Moab's National Parks - Arches and Canyonlands

Well, we thought it only right that whilst in Moab we should visit the national parks, this also gave our legs (and my bruises) and Charlie Camel a rest from the rigours of slickrock and sand.

We headed to Arches first as it's a full 5miles north of Moab central. We did our usual and called in at the visitors centre to collect our map and paper and then headed out along the main road with the plan to do some hikes when available (mm, great rest then ;-) ). The park is pretty similar to the terrain we had been experiencing in Moab, only with lots of arches. Suprise. Still, having watched the orientation video (aren't we good tourists) we knew roughly the bits and peices we wanted to see. Amongst them were Balancing Rock:



The Windows:



Landscape Arch (only 6ft thick at the narrowist point):



and of course, Delicate Arch - the unoffical symbol of Utah and what you'll see on all the numberplates around here:



Unfortuantly, it was 4pm by the time we got up to Delicate Arch so we didn't really have time for the 3hour hike up there, but it wasn't a bad thing as it was very busy. So we just took the 1mile hike to the view point (still bloomin' hard work uphill though!) and took some piccies from there.

As we were all arched out we made our way to Canyonlands via a cool trail called the Long Canyon:



Now, this is a bit of a weird national park. It centers on the convergence of the Green and Colorado Rivers, only to get there it's a 200mile drive and a 5 hour hike, you can see where we're going here! The park is divided into 3 areas, the Island in the Sky (the easiest to get to from Moab), the Needles and the Maze. The needles are pretty self explanitory and the Maze is full of stories like 'if you go there you'll get lost and die' - you can tell when you're back in a National Park! That was the area that Butch Cassidy and his gang hid in and it worked as all the lawmen were too scared to go in to get him out.

So, we headed to the Island in the Sky after a beautiful night of rough camping just up the road. Not a bad view eh?



We arrived the same time as the BMW Mini club, but they weren't overly chatty, grumpy lot. So we settled down to watch the Ranger talk about relationships in the dessert - did you know the tarantulas can get to 6" long?! Eh?! No-one told me?! Still, we have yet to see one, I'm just going to make sure I don't have to get up in the middle of the night now. We then drove the few roads within the park to the viewpoints, we could of cycled the White Rim trail, but it's 103miles long and you're not allowed to do it without a vehicle as well as it's impossible to carry enough water! We could of driven it, but the fees were quite expensive and as it was basically a gravel road we thought we'd have more fun on the Moab trails. So, after admiring the views we headed back out and towards Moab.



On our way back we pulled in to have a look at the petroglyphs on the Potash Road created a long time ago... er.. about 400 - 600 BC if I remember correctly?! Most of Moab uses designs from these images in the marketing and sculptures around town, so it was cool to see them 'in the flesh' as it were: