On Tuesday we moved 10 miles north of Blanding to this pleasant National Forest campground. There is hardly anyone else here, but they have quite a few reservations for the Memorial Day weekend. We met another full time RVer, Jeff, (also a budding photographer, check out his photos) at Lone Rock Beach, and again at Monument Valley. He was kind enough to e-mail us with the scoop on Canyonlands, and he had stayed at Devil’s Canyon, so we knew their water was not functioning and filled up our tank and several jugs before we left the RV park in Blanding. That’s probably one reason there is hardly anyone here. This is a great campground, though, all paved, level pads, no hookups and $10/night. Also over 7000 ft elevation so it’s much cooler here.
We thought we might head to Moab today where our mail is awaiting, and try to get a BLM spot before the weekend, but they are predicting mid 90’s and wind there the next two days, so we are just going to hang out here through the holiday.
Yesterday we took a drive to Canyonlands National Park, the Needles district.
It was about 60 miles from here to the visitors center, but it sure was worth the drive. We now know why you have to be there by 8 in the morning to get a campsite. What a great campground. There are only 26 sites, section A having wonderful views from all the well separated sites, while B has sites nestled in huge boulders. Really nice!
We drove the 10 mile scenic drive and hiked a couple trails. There are many more miles of rough Jeep roads if you have one. When we get that big Foretravel we dream about maybe we can tow a Jeep! Here are some pictures from our hikes. It was a bit overcast and hazy, so the pictures just don’t do it justice. This is from the Slickrock Trail, a 2.5 mile loop hiking over, what else, slickrock. Luckily it was well marked with cairns so we could find our way. At the high point we had a spectacular 360 degree view.
This is a beautiful park, and there was hardly anyone there. In fact, the few people we ran into were actually Americans. Guess the European tourists don’t have time to venture that far from the highway as it is 49 miles to the nearest town of Monticello.
We also hiked the short .6 mile Cave Springs Trail. which goes to an old cowboy camp, and then up 2 ladders to more views.
One more interesting site we stopped at on the road to the park was Newspaper Rock, a giant rock wall of petroglyphs that was actually pretty amazing.
It was another good day in southern Utah.
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