More Utah Amazingness

Following Bryce Canyon we were off to Kanab, UT for a week. We stayed at the Crazy Horse RV Park which was a good location to do little half-day adventures in the area. On one of our first days we went to the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary which is a no-kill shelter located on 33,000 acres of beautiful red rock land. This amazing sanctuary houses about 1,600 animals (dogs, cats, pigs, bunnies, goats, birds, and horses...). We went on a hike and found the "hidden lake" and then we ate lunch at their vegan cafe which has a $5 all you can eat, and very yummy, buffet. We were provided with a great tour of the grounds and couldn't have been more impressed with this amazing Sanctuary and all the good they are doing for SOOOO many animals; not only literally saving their lives, but then finding them forever homes (or keeping them forever if they are unadoptable). And the volunteer network they have is so damn impressive as well. If you are going to be in the area, this is a MUST SEE! And you can even sign up to volunteer for even just a day while you're in the area (which we totally would have done if we didn't have our own rescued pup waiting for us back at the trailer)...Oh, and they even have a hotel where you can take one of their animals for a sleepover so that they can have a night out for some lovin' on...HOW BLEEPIN' WONDERFUL IS THAT??!! Truly wonderful.

Another adventure included the Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park which was an amazingly sandy oasis in the middle of rocky Utah. These beautiful orange-red dunes are estimated to be between 10,000 and 15,000 years old and are gorgeous. They were formed from the erosion of the pink-colored Navajo Sandstone surrounding the park. We learned that the high winds passing through the Moquith and Moccasin Mountains picked up loose sand particles and then dropped them into the dunes and...VOILA - Mother Nature did it again! Unless you're there, you can't quite comprehend what a miracle of nature it felt like to see all this amazing sand amongst the huge rocky landscape. Penny liked walking in the soft sand (despite her advanced age and arthritis) and she had fun watching me climb to the top of one of the dunes. We saw sandboarding in action (aka - snowboarding but on sand) which was not only kind of a hoot - but kind of brilliant as well!

While in Kanab we went on a couple of other hikes through some slot canyons which had to be done very early in the morning so as to be able to tolerate the heat and have enough water. One hike was cut short because a ladder that's used to get down into the caves had recently been washed away in a flash flood and we, unfortunately, didn't have enough water on us to be able to access the detour other people were utilizing. We saw a "horse show" (albeit somewhat rinky-dink but still fun to see) and returned again to Best Friends for their amazing lunch. It was a good little week-long adventure.

Our next stop was Monroe, Utah where we stayed at a new campground, Monroe Canyon RV Park; a great find by Karl-The-Trip-Planner. (And come to find out, it was just a lucky find and not a purposeful one.) The park was on wide open land with no shade, but the view of the mountains all around us was pretty cool and very adventure-esque! The campground owner's family had a dairy farm that he grew up on, so he had taken to having a couple of the calfs on his property. They were adorable and they both had crushes on Penny! They also had some amazing locally made ice cream in the office; so yummy that people would come to the campground from in-town just to enjoy it. Karl and I were exceptionally thoughtful guests and indulged in said ice cream each day we were there. (You know - just to be supportive!!...)

I had originally been excited about visiting one of the local hot springs. However, given the high heat, that didn't sound all that enticing. Instead, we went with a suggestion from the women at the campground office and visited the Fremont Indian State Park. It had a wonderful museum in the visitor's center where we learned a lot about the Moki and Mu:kwitsi people; or the Fremont Indians, as the archaeologists refer to them. (Editor's note: "Mu:kwitsi people" is NOT a typo.) The Fremont Indians were ancestors of the Southern Paiute Indians that lived in the canyon somewhere between 700 -1,600 years ago. They left a lot of rock imagery in the canyon and there was a self-guided tour that took you to see the sacred landscapes that included Petroglyphs (an image that has been pecked, scratched, or in some way carved into the rock), Pictographs (an image created by adding pigment onto the rock, rather than carving into it), and Pictoglyphs (an image that was both carved and painted on the rock). These were amazing to see and made you wonder what the intent had been...To communicate who or what had been there? To help whoever showed up next? To entertain their children? To warn about predators?...It was all very fascinating regardless of the intent.

The next stop on our Great Utah Adventure was the city of Moab, where we stayed for 11 days. Our campground was in downtown Moab and provided us with easy access to both The Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park. The Arches had a very strict "timed entry" system, but luckily they opened up some time slots the night before, so we were able to get in for our recognizance mission on our first full day before booking some more premium spots (i.e., in the early mornings) later in the week. Our recognizance missions entail driving through to get a lay of the land and a sense of what feels like "MUST SEE" sights. It's OK for these to occur during not ideal heat times because we are cruising in the air conditioned truck and are just getting out to get a taste of what lies ahead in our adventure in the upcoming days. Penny came with us on this mission, so we took turns leaving the truck to either see some sights or to get a better sense of what type of walk (or hike) would be involved and how amazing the view appeared to be. The Arches were like nothing we'd seen so far and, again, pretty jaw-dropping! The recognizance mission was actually pretty humorous because after The Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon etc... you would've thought that we would be hard to impress but we would come back from our sneak peaks shaking our heads and saying, basically: "Yep - you gotta see this...WOW!..."

We went to The Arches a couple of more times for some nice hikes and LOTS of ooohing and ahhhing (and aforementioned head shaking). The names of some of the sites at the arches were also really clever and astute. For example: Park Avenue Viewpoint (where you felt like you were looking out at a city skyline); Balanced Rock Viewpoint (where there appears to be a big rock being balanced on a point)...pretty cool.

Another great thing about Moab were the walking trails they had in the town. There was one with a gorgeous bridge that we took one day and HAD to return with Penny because she loves bridges!

We also went to Canyonlands which is not that far from The Arches but is a whole different world because...there are canyons! Granted, in addition to the colorful canyons there are some buttes, and arches and mesas etc...thanks to water and gravity and time - but mostly there are CANYONS! The fact that it is about 20-30 minutes from the entrance to The Arches makes it seem like it's mathematically impossible to be so different but...alas, it was! It should be noted that we only explored The Island in the Sky area (which is the Northern area) of this massive 527 sq. mile National Park, and are, therefore, not as informed as we could be about its beauty. I have included a couple of photos which I'm sure you can tell were NOT taken at The Arches! Also, we DID attempt to go to The Needles section of Canyonlands on another day - but the road was closed after we'd traveled about an hour to get there...

Speaking of roads being closed - another interesting thing that transpired in our time in Moab was a "100 year flood"! It occurred in downtown Moab (yes...where we were staying), but we miraculously just happened to be a wee bit "uphill" from where the floods did the damage. Apparently, they had had some smaller flash floods right before we arrived. Unfortunately, these floods had left the top soil soaked through; so when an inch of rain hit the city in about 20 minutes time...YIKES! The flood dragged mud and debris throughout the city and we were shocked when we walked downtown in the morning (having absolutely NO idea what had transpired during the night). It was mind-boggling to see inches and sometimes feet of mud everywhere and people working together with shovels and backhoes trying to dig out. I've included a few pictures at the end of this post. Please note the water fountain that appears to be a large "chocolate fountain" had been running clear the day before...!