3.5.2012 – 3.5.2012  24 °C

After our usual morning ritual we hit the road for Moab Utah. Our journey today was via the ski resort town of Telluride. The locals in Ouray had all told us we had to go check out the town so following on with local advice we detoured into this small ski town. After seeing the town we probably all decided we could’ve avoided the detour as Telluride is a fairly standard little ski town. The big advantage of taking the detour though was that we saw a huge colony of what we think are either prairie dogs or gophers! In these couple of paddocks there must have been hundreds of the little dudes running around.. They really remind me of Meerkats.. one of the dogs sits on top of the burrow and watches for intruders. The scouts all talk to each other warning of dangers.. Like ‘humans are approaching!’ The reason I say this is because for the hundreds that I knew were there, I could not get a photo! As soon as I got out of the car all I could see was burrows and could constantly hear their chatter.. but could not see any of the little rodents!

The scenery gradually dried out and again became more rocky and sparsely vegetated the further we continued west. Eventually, we crossed back into Utah and had well and truly left the greenness of Colorado long behind! The only part of Colorado we didn’t lose was some snow capped mountains.. believe it or not right on the border with Utah there were still some snow sitting on the sides of the mountains!

The most memorable part of the drive was thru this little known valley to a town called Bedrock (yep I’m not joking) between two very high cliff faces.. the cliffs were beautiful colours and the valley was actually a greenish colour.. top that with a brilliant blue sky and wispy white clouds and I was in heaven! Give me colourful deserts any day to lush mountains!

We arrived in Moab just before lunch and spent a good hour looking for accommodation.. It appears that this is the start of rush season here in Utah and most accom is booked well in advance.. Mmmm.. we may need to actually start booking ahead to some of these places we want to see! We decided to have a big lunch and spend all afternoon out in Canyonlands NP so we made a pit stop to the local Chinese and filled up at the chew and spew.. (well not exactly spew but you know what I mean!)

The drive out to Canyonlands was blessedly quiet with most of the journey car free! We arrived at the front gate just before 4pm to discover that the park doesn’t actually close so we had at least 3.5hrs of sunlight to enjoy the parks beauty! Canyonlands is in many ways similar to Grand Canyon and in many ways not similar!! Similar in the fact that the canyon formations are reminiscent of the GC but the viewing points for Canyonlands is much higher up than the rim of the GC so you can actually see more of the canyon formations.

We only had time to see the Island in the Sky section of the park (which is basically the roof of these huge mesa that covers a third of the park). To see the edge of the canyon,  we drove over the top of the mesa to the Grand View point (I swear all of the parks here in the US have a Grand View!) and it certainly lived up to expectations..  You could see for miles! And in all directions is one big canyon setup that houses the Colorado and Green Rivers. If you have a 4wd (and plenty of time) you can drive down on to the second layer of mesas and get right down near the canyon walls! Obviously we have neither so we had to be happy with the view from the top!

Second and final stop in the park was up to see this huge salt dome that is could have been formed by a meteor.. We had to hike up to the top of the rim of the meteor to see the dome and it was a strange site.. This huge mound of yellowish/ greyish/ pinkish salt all surrounded by rocks… I guess it could have been a meteor but probably must have been a smallish meteor..

By now the sun was starting to sink into the west so we headed back to Moab for a shower and an early night in. Tomorrow its back out to see Arches NP and another evening in stunning Moab.

Song of the Day– Beatles, Twist and Shout