Day 6 Sept 13 Natural Bridges NM, Bears Ears, Canyonlands NP, Needles Overlook, Moaab KOA

Braun and I did a whole bunch of loops around the campground this morning in the sprinkles. Not really rain, but we have 300 miles to go today so it's a lot of sitting, still shooting for 10k steps/day. So far I have 5003 steps.

that's Mexican hat.

It's a sprinkley day.

We passed the road to Bears Ears, it's a dirt road. Ok for a jeep, not an RV in the rain. So we aren't going there.

Natural bridges national monument has 3 natural bridges. We saw them from the overlook points, but there was a trail very steep like stairs to get to the gorge floor. Braun would not have been permitted because it was a dirt trail. Dogs are only allowed on paved trails.

Our view 

but the better view on the sign

The paved path to viewpoint 

rock sand patterns.

a muddy waterfall carving the canyon.

our view of the 2nd arch

the best view on the sign.

the 3rd arch

the better view on the sign

and the night view on the sign

Here's the next issue of the day; we drove through Monticello Utah on the way to canyonlands 15 miles outside of town we took the exit to go to canyonlands and a half a mile in the road is blocked and there's a tiny little sign that says if you want to go to canyonlands go back to Monticello turn on Harts Draw road and turn on 211 and you can get there that way. This is a 300 mile day and we have places to see and things to do but we drove back to Monticello and talk to the forest service office about how to get there cuz we can't find the roads or mentioned on the map. She directed us to The visitor center in town who apparently has had this question many times. I guess 3 weeks ago the road got washed out and they haven't put up a sign in Monticello to tell people that. So the road to get to Canyonlands is paved but only one lane and 30 miles. Then we go see Canyonlands and have to retrace our steps back to Monticello before we drive out to Moab. We called the campground to tell them we'll probably be late. And we have these big dark rain clouds all around that are intermittently raining on us. So I don't know what the terrain will be like or the visibility. But here we go we wanted an adventure. Kudos to the guy in the visitors center he was very nice. I guess a lot of Moab got washed out too with the big rain 3 weeks ago. We'll have to see what we see there.

The road was much better than he said. It was a great road and one lane in each direction.

We made it to Canyonlands NP. This park does not have the horseshoe bend in the river, that is a state park, we stand corrected. The big monoliths and different shapes of the rocks and hills are phenomenal. 

                 Today we have seen wild turkeys, deer and rabbits. On the way out of the area we found the sign for Bears Ears but we never found bears ears.

we saw a whole lot of deer on the way out including this mama with 2 fawns.

And the weather all blew out and a nice sunny late afternoon.

our last stop of the day before finding our campground is needles overlook. We make it there at sunset at 7pm.

It's an overlook of the canyons. Spectacular!  Got some pictures and tried to beet feet back down the 22 mile road before it was dark. Of course we didn't make it. We had to find the Moab KOA inn the dark.

Thinking the stress of this full day was done.... We ran into road work at night with traffic delay, flagman, and escorted slow drive thru the work zone. What an Adventure.