Retirement Travels

Capitol Reef was another beautiful place. As you drive through the park, there are several petroglyph panels/rock art. The Castle Capitol Reef is sometimes called the Land of the Sleeping Rainbow. The rocks are colorful because of the different layers of rock. Each layer is composed of totally different material. The Chinle Formation is primarily composed of volcanic ash that gives us the grayish hue. The Wingate Sandstone layer is virantly red because it is the product of solidifying sand dunes which are hight in iron.  Olyer uranium mines Chimney Rock We hiked the 4.4 mile in and out Grand Wash into a slot canyon.  Casen is standing in the holes caused by water rushing through this wash over the years. Checking out an opening in the canyon walls. Butterfly The bottom side of this canyon wall was carved into a ledge by water running through the wash. Casen is laying on the ledge. Standing under the ledge Ernie standing under the ledge. The unique canyon walls were similar to ...

The drive to Canyonlands Needles District  from our park was almost an hour. We got delayed for over a half hour due to this accident. They had the highway shutdown while they flipped this truck upright. The next task would be getting that huge base off the road. Thankfully the driver was not injured.  You may or may not remember me posting pictures of Bears Ears. What is special about Bears Ears? The landscape is known to contain over 100,000 cultural sites from the early inhabitants of the area. These sites are incredibly fragile and not really prepared to accommodate hordes of curious travelers. The National Monument actually has some history to it that is interesting and a little political.😕 When driving into Canyonlands National Park you'll be passing through a section of Bears Ears National Monument, or not. Knowing the boundaries of this national monument are a little complicated and subject to change. Named for the twin buttes that rise dramatically out of the Colorad...

The next day we went back into Canyonlands NP and drove out to Dead Horse Point State Park. According to one legend, the point was once used as a corral for wild mustangs roaming the mesa. Cowboys rounded them up and herded them across the narrow neck of land on to the point. The neck, which is only 30 yards wide, was fenced off with branches and brush creating a natural corral surrounded by steep cliffs. The cowboys then chose the horses they wanted and for reasons unknown, left the other horses corralled on the waterless point, where they died of thirst within view of the Colorado river 2,000 feet below. We hiked along the rim. It was cool that we could see the horseshoe made by the Colorado River that we saw from our drive on Potash road. These are the Potash fields from a higher elevation We then continued on in the national park and took the short walk on what they call the Island in the Sky, the views were amazing. We got a better view of Shafer Trail, the one we drove the Jeep o...