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Monday, July 17, 2006 – Canyonlands, Utah Today we drove to the Needles district of Canyonlands. The Colorado River and the Green River divide the park into three sections. The different sections are not connected by roads. One must leave the park to see another part of the park. We drove south from Moab on Route 191 and then west on Route 211 to arrive at the Visitor’s Center. We looked at the exhibits and talked to the rangers before we started on our scenic drive of the Needles. We stopped at several overlooks to enjoy the beautiful scenery. On the road out of the park, we saw a sign pointing to Newspaper Rock and decided to stop and look at it. The rock had so many petroglyphs on it. One petroglyph looked like a wagon wheel. Bob said that it looked like a cowboy may have added that picture to the petroglyph. We drove back to Route 191. Before we reached Moab, there was a sign that pointed to Needles Overlook. We turned on the road to explore the area. At the end of the road was an overlook. We decided to eat lunch in the car because Susan had received a lot of insect bites on the day that we visited Canyonlands in the Island in the Sky. She did not want to get any more insect bites. After we ate our sandwiches and chips in the car, we got out of the car to explore. We followed the path, which took us around the edge of the mesa on slickrock. We looked down on the canyons in the park. The views at this overlook were one of the most spectacular scenes that we have seen on this trip. At one overlook, a man from the Bureau of Land Management asked if we would take five minutes to answer some questions for a survey. Another man joined him a few minutes later and we had a conversation about teaching with him. |