Red Rocks - Southwest trip, 2012
CANYONLAND National Park, Utah
CANYONLAND National Park
is, as is obvious from the pictures below, canyonland is a pretty desolate area. As with all the places we visited on this trip, the sometimes rather bizarre rockformations are among the main attractions of the park. On
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the left is a picture of the main road through the park - actually it is the ONLY road. Great backpacking country, if you don't worry too much about the rattlers. On the right is a picture of a rather famous rock formation - the final resting place of the "Monitor" und the "Merrimac". Ok, not the actual resting place, but it doesn't take too much imagination to see these two famous civil war ships facing off against each other. I forgot which sank what. Below are a few more pictures of the park scenery. But the rugged scenery is NOT the main reason to make a trip to Canyonland. |  |
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It also was not because of the interesting looking pools on the left that we came here. No, you can see in the picture on the right what we really, really wanted to do: Take a ride down the Colorado on a jetboat. Alternatively, I would have liked to ride a raft like the picture in the middle below shows. (No dice with Nick!); heck, I would have been happy with one of the slower sightseeing boats, like the one on the left below. Of course, slow is relative - it is called a "jet boat" |  |
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Rafting down the Colorado in Canyonland |
Unfortunately, we were not permitted any one of these adventures. As is often the case, the best laid plans sometimes come to nought. Our problem was a lack of water in the river. No one could ride jet boats, sightseeing and sunset dinner boats or perhaps even the large rafts down the Colorado. For us this was a disappointment, but for Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah the lack of snow this winter is a serious problem. Last year there was plenty of snow and rain and it looked like the drought had broken, but now it appears that it is back. | ||
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Since we could not ride down the river, the did the next best thing - we drove UP the river on US 128 as far as it follows the river (then it peels off to the left toward Interstate 70) On this drive we took the pictures of the Colorado and the mountains in the background with the sparse snow cover. In the pictures below one can see some snow on the distant mountains, but trust me, it was obvious that there just was hardly any snowpack. Not a good omen for the coming fire season. |  |
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