And Into Arizona

Today, I read in a brochure "Most people come to this part of the World to see the Grand Canyon, but there is so much more". We have a couple of days before we're due to see the Grand Canyon, and it better be all it's cracked up to be, because we've seen some wondrous things so far. Today we started off in the town of Springdale, Utah, which is a gateway town to Zion National Park. To be honest, I wasn't too fussed about this part of the journey before we left Australia, but today I saw the light. Zion is a beautiful combination of rocks and valleys, a blend of colours that bring nature vividly to life. The only down side to the area was the lack of running rivers. We're at the end of a dry summer and things were looking pretty arid. Saying that, it was still magnificent.

Multicoloured mountainsides of Zion National Park

The rivers in Zion were very low

Beautiful fir trees cover the lower slopes in Zion

We then headed back east to Page in Arizona. Page is situated next to Lake Powell, a reservoir created in the 1950's and 1960's after the building of Glen Canyon Dam. We had to cross the dam today, and got our first glimpse of the mighty Colorado River running through enormous red faced cliffs. Tomorrow is our main day of exploration around Page as we're staying here for the day. Moving out of Utah, we have headed on to the borders of the Navajo nation, which we'll enter tomorrow. It is very obvious that Page has been shaped by the Navajo culture.

Sitting in front of 'Checkerboard Mountain'

The Colorado River at Glen Canyon Dam

What Have I Learned Today?

Today was a longish drive in a transition day of our holiday. We had one of those before where we expected to be fighting the boredom all day. However, that day, when we drove from Fresno to Winnemucca turned out to be quite interesting, and today was also. We left Moab heading west on the next stage of our trip which will take us to Arizona. We left Moab after breakfast in a diner, where Caroline made the mistake of ordering pancakes. The waitress turned up with a plate load that could have fed a family of 4. Caroline tried valiantly, but was unable to clean her plate!

The road through central Utah was across high lands, and with varying landscapes. As a slight change from previous days, we skirted great canyons, one of which was a notorious hideout used by Butch Cassidy's gang, among others. There were also stark red mountains, forested mountains, and lush green valleys flanked by sedimentary rocky mountains. There were also some weird almost white rock formations that contrasted vividly with the mostly red mountains.

Secret Mesa, the canyon was a hideout for Butch Cassidy, among others

Our planned stop for the day was at the Fremont Indian State Park, where we learned about this Native American culture. There is a small, but very informative museum and walks which show off the massive amount of petroglyph's in the area. The visitor centre is situated a bird's eye view from the largest Fremont Indian settlement to be found. The Fremont culture is about 800-1500 years old and little is known about their way of life (I have learned that this culture invented moccasin's). They were a settled people, rather than nomadic as were some other native American peoples, they farmed, and were skilled at tool making but their wall paintings, and etchings are what Caroline and I (and countless others, no doubt) were there to see. The State Park, around the area of Clear Creek Canyon in Utah is filled with these wall etchings, We had to walk about 50 yards from the visitor's centre to start seeing them, and they are amazingly clear taking into account they are the best part of 1000 years old.

Fremont Indian Petroglyphs

Fremont Indian Petroglyphs

Fremont Indian Petroglyphs

The Fremont Indian State Park was over half way on our journey and left us with only about 2 hours of driving. The driving conditions were tiring as there was severe winds blowing across the state of Utah today. In fact, they are expecting snow next week according to a guy I was talking to in the amusingly named town of Beaver, Utah. Our final destination was Springdale which sits by the entrance to Zion National Park which we'll be exploring tomorrow. The road into Springdale was beautiful, rising from a valley near the interstate, up into more rocky red mountains along the Virgin River valley (this post is beginning to develop a theme!). We're staying at a place called Bumbleberry Inn, and I learned that this is named after the collection of numerous berries to be put into a pie, probably by some bumbling cook.

Great views on the road into Springdale

Dinosaurs

The stunning Red Fleet State Park, near Vernal, Utah

This holiday has allowed Caroline and I to do and see some amazing things. Seeing Sequoia that are over 2000 years old was very cool, as was visiting Yellowstone where we saw Geysers and had a magical moment leaving the National Park. We saw some cars stopped by the side of the road, and we pulled over to see why. There was an enormous male elk in the trees by the side of the road. I was driving so Caroline quickly lowered her passenger window to take a snap when he bolted. We thought we'd scared him until we heard wolves howling in the background. The thrill of just hearing wolves was amazing and something we really weren't expecting.

Caroline touches a 150 million year old Stegosaurus leg bone

Well today things just carried on with amazing happenings. We stopped in the northern Utah town of Vernal overnight which is a gateway to the National Dinosaur Monument. This is a large area of land in southern Wyoming, northern Utah, and western Colorado where amazing dinosaur finds have been unearthed. The main place to go is the Dinosaur Quarry Exhibit Hall which is a building encompassing a massive archaeological site which holds masses of large dinosaur remains. As you walk around you are allowed to touch the dinosaur bones. This is just fantastic, touching the bones of something which lived about 150 million years ago. Just a short hop away, the local historic culture of the Fremont Indians is visible in Petroglyphs that date back 1000 years.

Quarry Exhibit Hall is built over the rock face that encases the dinosaur bones

1000 year old Fremont Indian Petroglyphs

From dinosaur land we headed east into Colorado and went further than we really wanted to which was my mistake as I was navigating. We stopped in a town called Craig (coincidentally, my nephew's name!) where a friendly waitress in a bar helped us to find our way again. We'd gone too far east, and added about 80 miles on to our journey today. Should we perhaps invest in a GPS? Yes, to the disbelief of some we are travelling around with no GPS in a foreign country, and have managed just over 2500 miles getting lost once, and even then we weren't that lost! In fact, getting lost allowed us a friendly chat and the road we took to get back on track was absolutely stunning cutting through the Colorado River valley east of Grand Junction. Our "mistake" turned into a blessing.

Sunset just north of Moab, Utah

The last part of the journey was back into Utah and into the town of Moab. Now Utah has some pretty strict drinking laws, so we were a little surprised to find a microbrewery in Moab, serving excellent beer, and decent food. I had a couple of Scorpion Pale Ales, and they tasted great with a decent strength. We felt a good beer to finish the first week was well deserved. The holiday so far has been unbelievable and tomorrow we head into the Arches National Park which is situated just 5 miles from where we're staying.

A great place for a deserved beer after a week of driving and experiencing some wonderful moments.