Summer Road Trip 2022

Because it's such a spread out park, we split our time at Canyonlands into two days. The first day, the Needles District wound up being our very first stop in Utah! As we drove in from Mesa Verde on Saturday, we took a left off of Highway 191 that led to Moab, opting for a 32 mile detour to the Needles District.

Driving through the enormous, red monoliths for the first time is an experience I hope I never forget. There was an unexpected thrill in experiencing something entirely new for the first time.

Our first stop was at Newspaper Rock before we were officially into the park. It's a huge wall of ancient cave writings that's right at the side of the road. Researchers don't have any translations for the writings and it's amazing that these millennia-old drawings survive the desert environment without any protection. It just sits there as casually as any other graffiti that someone might spray on today.

We loaded back up and continued down the road to the entrance of the Needles District. We didn't get there until almost 5p and the visitors center and rangers station were closed, but we continued down the road to see what we could see. Holden was delighted to spy his first arch: Wooden Shoe Arch, a tiny spec of an arch way off in the distance that does indeed look just like an old wooden clog shoe.

As we drove, we could see the spires of the Needles in the distance, but the road didn't take us there, which was a disappointment. The best way to see the Needles is a 3 mile hike that we were not equipped for that day. Instead we drove to Big Spring Overlook, an impressive canyon with a surprising amount of green vegetation that stands out brightly against the red rocks. We all got out and explored for a while, but not too long as it was already well past 5p and in the mid-90s temperature-wise.

This detour was such an invigorating start to our exploration of Moab and this land of red rocks, sand, arches and what we would soon see to be endless canyons.

A couple of days later on Monday evening, after our big morning exploring the Fiery Furnace, we headed out to the Island in the Sky district of Canyonlands. The entrance to the park is about 30 minutes from Moab and an easy drive through miles of prairie land. I was getting comfortable with the landscape and Nate joked that he didn't realize we'd be back to driving through Kansas, when out of nowhere the land all around us just fell away and there were nothing but vast canyons. It was wild how immediately the landscape changed.

From our vantage point in Cayonlands we could see Dead Horse Point, the iconic spot where they filmed Thelma & Louise driving off the edge, and we later learned they filmed the rock climbing scenes from Mission Impossible 2.

We stopped at Mesa Arch, one of the famous arches along the edge of the canyon. I was probably nervous beyond reason for the boys to scurry around there, but my height-anxiety was in full effect at this stop. We clumsily took a family selfie and I got away from that edge as soon as I could. It is very cool though to look through the arch and see the canyons stretch seemingly all the way to the La Sal Mountains in the distance.

We stopped at a few more places before finally reaching our last top, Grand View Point trailhead. We walked along the edge of the canyon for about a mile before reaching the final point. It was a calm evening and the temperature had dropped nicely. There was a very healthy distance to the edge of the cliff along the trail, but if there had been a railing at the edge of the thousand-foot dropoff, the evening walk stroll would have been perfect. Alas, Holden & I walked hand and hand as close to the rock wall as possible. He was especially tired from the big adventure at Fiery Furnace earlier in the day, but didn't complain at all as we took in these views.

We made it to the end of the trail and all quietly sat in amazement of the seemingly endless canyons that stretched west toward the horizon. It was a hazy evening and there was a bit of rain way out west, obscuring the sunset, but it was all still astounding.

Canyonlands is a special place. I'm glad we all got to experience it together for the first time.Read more