Canyonlands National Park

 

After the Arches we headed to Canyonlands - the Needles District. We got all our backpacking gear together and filled up our 7 liters of water and headed off into the Tattooine looking landscape. We started at the Elephant Hill Trailhead and somehow ended up getting off path and were actually quite lost for 2 hours, wandered around looking at gps and our paper map until we found a part of the trail that linked back to the parking lot, arrived back to our start point and started AGAIN.

 

After our 2 hour mishap we hiked 3.5 miles to our awesome campsite. We hiked up a small hill to it and wandered around a cave up top until we set up camp on a rock overlooking the edge of the Needles and making some Chili Mac. The hike in was really pretty and filled with layered rocks that jutted up out of the ground and were striated with lots of great colors. The sky was really blue and beautiful.

That night we hung out on our own private canyon overlook with no one anywhere near us and drank some wine, did a little random yoga & stretching, and then I finished reading the first Harry Potter book to Joshua (yes, I do voices, I'm a good Hagrid)

view from our campsite

EC2 campsite



sweaty stud :)

 

 

 

Next morning we got up at around 5 and started the 3 mile hike to Druid arch. It was lovely to not have the sun on us yet as we wandered down a sandy bottom of and old river bed winding through rock formations and climbing up some really cool stuff. Then we turned the corner and realized the tall rock we'd been looking at the whole time was actually the arch, but you couldn't see it from any angle except the one the trail lead you up. It was a really tall arch with stunning blue sky peaking through. We were the first people up there that morning and just got to sit beneath it and stare out at the canyon as the sun started to peak over its top.



 

We were slated to stay another night backpacking but decided we needed more water so we hiked out and then thought we'd rather go check out another area of the Canyonlands and go see a friend, Katy, who happened to be in Moab the same time as us (crazy!!)

 

So that night we drove over to the Island in the Sky portion of Canyonlands and got a great view of the Green River and a few other overlooks that were really interesting and inspiring. We even cooked up some dinner at sunset inside the park before headed back.

 

 





newspaper rock



Next up The Great Salt Lake (I dare you not to start singing the Band of Horses song)