Awoken by quite a bit of rain at five o’clock, I was kept awake as it fell for a couple of hours.  Morning riding plans of Porcupine Rim were consequently forgone & we eventually headed north out of Moab to the northern part of Canyonlands NP.  The park is separated in to three distinct areas by the confluence of the Colorado & Green Rivers.  Island in the Sky is the north section – a large mesa that lets you look down on canyons below.  We drove around the twenty-odd miles of road stopping at various view points & doing some small (best part of an hour).

The first area we spent any time was overlooking Upheavel Dome – set in a crater about two miles across, there is still speculation where this came from.  Was it from salt rising up from under the ground or a meteor crashing to earth?  Either way, the green colour was neat to look at.

We then waited around at the viewpoint over the Green River as the mist was taking a while to clear.

I amused myself by looking over the edge of the cliff & the interesting patterns on the floor.

Eventually, the clouds moved enough to shed some light on most of the canyon below. It wasn’t too hard waiting, even in the mist it was one of the best views we’ve had yet (as evidenced by the compulsion to keep taking photos before sitting back & just admiring it all).

A little further down the road, things still looked insanely big.

At the east end of the road, we had good views down to the Colorado & the White Rim Canyon surrounding it (there is a 100 mile 4WD/MTB trail that follows the canyon around – that would be an epic ride).

We took a walk to the end of the point & watched as storm clouds rolled in – on the way back we got decidedley hailed on before getting caught up in another (albeit much closer) impressive thunder & lightning show.

Our wonderful, albeit wet, week in Grand Junction concluding, it was time to hit the road again for Moab.  The easy two hour drive was beautiful as we made our way through some rather barren land beside I-70, although it has a bit of green tinge to it at the moment.  Glad to have waited a few more days to miss the weekend, I continued to watch the stream of traffic heading out of town.  It’s so good to be back in Utah, with only three days in the state two years ago, it was definitely one of my favourites.  But we are clearly on the tourist trail now as this afternoon we heard & saw many different nationalities, not to mention a fair percentage of the rental car fleets from California & Nevada.  We haven’t really had too many crowds to deal with in our first five states, but as summer vacation & California approaches I don’t imagine it’s going to get much better.

All afternoon was spent at Arches National Park, which is just north of Moab. We saw many arches, mesas, spires & fans. It was incredible & you’ll quickly get sick of my superlatives – so I’ll just post a few photos (one day I’ll get a better camera, I promise).

The Three Gossips

Balanced Rock – it looks small with no perspective, about 39 metres high

Double Arch

North Window

We took a small hike over a lot of rock to Delicate Arch

Delicate Arch – that’s me at the bottom

Fins, from which arches form

Another one of those National Parks that I didn’t know existed until a few days ago was our objective for the day.  That was, after I finished the wonderful Agatha Christie novel The Secret of Chimneys (Kindles are great for traveling).  The Black Canyon was about ninety minutes’ drive SE of Grand Junction & we were pleased to leave behind the rain & see it dry out a bit.  From the town of Montrose, you drive up to about 2400m & after entering the park on top of what is not a particularly wide hill, there is all of a sudden a very deep but skinny canyon off the side of the road.

The canyon has the best combination of deepness, steepness & narrowness in the continent & it really is quite impressive. Carved out of hard rock by the fast-flowing Gunnison River (which flows on to the Colorado at Grand Junction), the canyon floor loses more elevation in forty-eight miles than the Mississippi does in its entire length (1550 miles). I thought we’d skip the Visitor Center to start with to make the most of the break in the weather. I was wrong, within ten minutes we were being snowed on heavily.

Consequently, we went back to the Visitor Center & had a quick look around & waited for the weather to clear. For the next hour or so, we drove around the South Rim dodging the snow, & then rain, taking in various vantage points. Besides the spectacular canyon, the highlight was seeing my first bobcat skulking off in to the bushes a few metres away from the trail. We got a better view of it a few minutes later as we were driving down the road – they are smaller than I, for some reason, thought. Unfortunately, no photo. Here are few more pictures of different parts of the canyon for those interested. While the clouds & rain can get a bit annoying at times, they do add a bit of a different atmosphere to the scenery.

These stripes in the rock were neat – formed by molten lava infiltrating cracks in the rock that was already there many moons ago.

Now I’m going back to a Poirot – the first in a while.