Our first park in Utah was Dead Horse Point State Park. From the moment you get to the visitors center you are just blown away by the spectacular vistas. The first photo (above) is the view near the visitors center and the second photo was taken during our hike on the Rim trail. In the second photo you can see the Colorado river as it winds its way through the canyon. And, you can see how close the trail gets to the edge of the Canyon Wall...its a long way down!
Our first National Park was Canyonlands. Canyonlands covers 337,570 acres. This photo is from The Island in the sky district, one of the three districts in the park. The rock formations are just breathtaking. As we hiked Island in the Sky we were continually overwhelmed with amazing views and the clarity of the air making it possible to see mountains that are over 100 miles away!
Not wanting to just look at the "rocks" we tried out Moab Golf Club. What a wonderful surprise as we took in the amazing beauty of the course. It is, possibly, the most beautiful course we had ever played on. This is just an example of the view of one of the holes as we were walking up a pretty big incline to the next hole. Mark pulled the clubs and I took the photo. We did not play our best golf as we had been away from Palm Creek for almost 2 weeks!
Probably, the most famous site of Utah, which adorns license plates and signs, is the symbol for Arches National Park, Delicate Arch. Mark and I hiked the Delicate Arch View trail over a lot of slickrock. There are so many interesting sites in Arches National Park, but one other that is quite interesting is Balancing Rock. You get a true feel for the sheer size when you realize that little figure on the right is Mark!
We experienced a real windstorm after we got back from Arches. The next day the wind had died down but was still gusting pretty strongly. So as not to lose the day we headed out to Red Cliffs Lodge. Lots of old westerns were filmed there as well as scenes from Thelma and Louise and Back to the Future. We enjoyed a nice lunch on the patio secluded from the wind, did some wine tasting, naturally bought a few bottles, and visited the movie museum. Thought you would enjoy the photo of me and my good buddy John Wayne.
Mark got adventurous and decided to go mountain biking. He rented a $3900 Canondale mountain bike and went out with a group. They went to Klondike Bluff,an intermediate trail and when they finished that trail they went to the famous sliprock trail. When you see photos of mountain bikers in Utah they are generally riding sliprock trail. Mark had a great time although he said it definitely got his adreniline flowing.
Next stop Torrey, Utah to visit Capitol Reef National Park.
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