Blanding day 4 - Monument Valley, Goosenecks State Park, and Valley of the Gods (again)

For our final tour from Devil's Canyon, we headed down to Monument Valley which is a Navajo tribal park just on the Arizona side of the border.  $20 entry and you get to drive around a gravel loop and look at the rocks along with a few thousand other people.  To be fair, it was also a Saturday.  Was impressive but our preference is for Valley of the Gods... which is why we drove that loop again on the way back (but from east to west this time, to keep it different).  In between we stopped at Goosenecks State Park which we'd missed last time by cutting off on the Valley of the Gods loop.  Tried to talk the boss into going up and down the Mobi Dugway again but she wasn't having any of that.

Why do people do this?  Are they trying to copy the spires or something?  Or just prove that they're co-ordinated enough to balance a rock on another?  

If you do this, please stop because it looks stupid.  Or pile your rocks in your own yard where the rest of us don't have to see them.  

Unless you're legitimately trying to mark something, or point a direction.  Or keep the coyotes from digging up a body.  

Just north of Monument Valley is the town of Mexican Hat.  Just north of the town of Mexican Hat is this balanced rock.  Not sure how any of this relates, but thought it was interesting.  

OK, my pictures of Goosenecks aren't that impressive, so just a couple here.  Google up some images to be really impressed.  

Monument Valley pic out of order?  Nope, Valley of the Gods where you can drive where you want at your own pace and only meet 1 or 2 other vehicles... 

Blanding Day 3 - Hovenweep National Monument and Cortez Colorado

Not many people realize that the place where Gandalf met the elves is right around here, but when we found out we had to go see.  Kind of surprised us as we thought the Elves lived in the forest and these houses look more like something Dwarves would build, but I guess if this is the way the government archaeologists say it was then that's that.

Miles and miles of flat ground around, and these guys liked to build on the edge of the cliffs.  

Ah!  This must be the tower where the princess lived.  

The map showed a few ruins off to the northeast of the main site, some accessible by 'high clearance 4WD' only.  You KNOW we're gonna go see those... 

Oh come on. Now they're just being silly.  

Unless there were a lot of bad kids in this group and carrying rocks up a cliff kept them out of trouble...

If this rock shifted while they were still living here I bet there were a few quick sacrifices...

There's a pattern here... the buildings that are hardest for us modern-type people to get to seem to be the most intact... curious... 

A tower with a walk-out basement suite... 

After listening to ads from the Cortez marijuana grow op on the radio all week (my favourite:  "Hunters! Show us your license and get a free joint!") we had to go see the town.  Sadly no debauchery or wasted pot heads laying around the streets that we could find.  We did park by this cool mural though.  And got a couple nice Sonic milkshakes for the drive home.  

Blanding day 2

Day two from the Blanding base was a loop out to Natural Bridges National Monument, then south through the Mobi Dugway, loop through Valley of the Gods, and finally through the town of Bluff before heading back to Blanding.  All those places are pretty Google-friendly so no need for me to describe.

All our bridges pics are from the highway overlooks - neither of us felt like clambering down the trail into the canyon.  I'm sure you can Google some great pics though.  Also we started taking some video which probably won't get posted, and that cut into the # of snapshots we've been taking.  

My gosh what an exhausting day! 

Blanding Utah

Well, we made the big move from Moab all the way to Blanding, a whopping 66.4 miles.  Actually we didn't make it to Blanding with the motorhome, stopping just north at Recapture Reservoir BLM area (37.66752 -109.44370) for one night and then moving back up the highway a bit to Devil's Canyon NFS campsite (37.73587 -109.41145) for four.  Recapture is a nice little spot with a lake and boat launch, but we were a bit uncomfortable leaving the rig unattended there while we day-tripped.  Devil's Canyon is an actual campground with a host and everything, and some very nice sites for a mere $10/night.  We also had some phone service at Devil's whereas we had no phone or internet at Recapture.

Recapture Reservoir.  Great spot if you're fishing or hanging around the campsite.  

Devil's Canyon.  Yup, that's asphalt and concrete and steel picnic table.  Pretty swank for 10 bucks.  

We made a few day trip loops from Blanding: first to the Needles section of Canyonlands National Park plus the Needles overlook area with a stop at Newspaper Rock (ancient graffiti site) along the way: 

See if you can spot:

- four and six toed feet, 

- ancient aliens, 

Santa's reindeer.  

See those people sitting way out there?  They're on a bench at the end of the path.  We talked about going out there but decided against it because WE'RE NOT INSANE.  

Yeah, it's there.  Towards the upper right.