Around Moab

After our night in Moab we spent most of the day checking out Arches National Park & Canyonlands National Park. Both are within 30 mins of Moab.

First up was Arches. Though we are still actually about 6,000ft in elevation this park is considered the bottom of the canyons. This was taken once we had entered the park. Below is a 4 lane highway into Moab. Next to that the service road to the Visitors Centre which you can see below near the car park. We then drove up the rockface behind the visitors centre. Notice how high the wall is in the background too. Massive! Mark was literally like a kid in a candy shop. He was so amazed with the enormity of it all... gasping and saying .. 'check that out'... 'look at that' etc... it was just great!

A typical scene. On the left in this pic you can see a yellow school bus.

Guess who didn't consider he would be wearing his one and only hat today, when he chose his t-shirt?????

A panorama of an amazing canyon.

It was a 36 mile round trip with little off shoots for viewing and trail walking!

Can you spot Mark in this pic? He looks tiny! This rock behind him is at least 1000ft high.

A couple of arches in the distance. There are around 2,000 in total throughout the park.

One that we walked to. Thats me in the middle underneath. Mark was concerned about the loose rock in the crack above my head. We headed back to Moab for a quick lunch as there is nothing available in the parks.

Next up was Canyonlands. It was a 25 mile drive from the main road to the park entrance. The main part of the park is called the 'Island in the Sky'. To get to it we had 2 small sections of road where it fell away very steeply on both sides of the road. This 'island' is created by the Green river and the Colorado river which join below it and continur as the Colorado river to the Grand Canyon. We hiked to this arched view of the canyon below.

A cheesy photo taken by another tourist. Note we arent too far back as it literally falls as a 2000 ft drop to the floor below.

Mark checking out the view from behind a safe rock wall. Its hard to tell in this pic but it was like layers of earth. Imagine we are on the top layer. The next layer down the 2000 ft below and then in the distance another deep canyon with the river in the bottom of it. Again at least a further 1000 ft down.

A view from another vantage point. You can see the lower canyon and river at the base. You can also see other 'islands in the sky'. It was all so amazingly beautiful.

We left Canyonlands finally around 4:30 pm and spent the night in Price. Yesterday heading north again the weather is noticably cooler than the week earlier and we again saw some really lovely autumn colours on the mountains. There was so much of the pretty peachy pinks, rusts, yellows etc.

We were tossing up whether to stop in Park City or Spend the last night here in Salt Lake City again. We stopped in Park /city for lunch and a stroll along main street. Its such a pretty and relaxed town. However, we decided to spend the night in SLC to be close to the airport for our flight to Vancouver. BTW its on 30 miles from Park City to SLC so an easy drive... Next installments will be from CANADA!! yay!!! Really appreciate your comments and knowing who is reading. Thanks! x