On to Moab

Our bandmates took off home and H and I headed east to Moab. Pretty quickly out of Capitol Reef the color of the rocks and landscape changed to grays and blacks. We stopped to make coffee on the roadside in one long dingy stretch.

Quick travel tip if you ever go through Green River, Utah: the John Wesley Powell River History Museum is well worth an attentive stop. Along with interesting displays you might expect on local history and geology, some highlights are the loony attempts at a ferry service and the copper plates used to print early USGS maps. 

From Moab we took a day to hike the Syncline Loop trail in Canyonlands, an eight-mile circle around Upheaval Crater, the remnants, apparently, of the impact of a meteorite some 60 million years ago.

This was spectacular, rough terrain and a lightly marked trail, often cairn-to-cairn and featuring some scrambling over rockfalls. 

We got started early and saw one couple at the trailhead, then no one at all for six and a half hours. We realized we had not experienced such a long stretch of silence in who knows when: no other humans, no motors, no wind, no birds, no insects, no running water. 

Finding a jam-packed parking lot was a bit jarring at the end of the hike but it was well worth joining the herd trudging up to the overview of the crater, with mild shades of Half Dome up the back of the view point.

We paused at another overlook on our way out of the park to gaze out over the the Green River en route to the the Colorado.

Next day we made another even earlier start to get ahead of the crowds into Arches National Park, arriving at the entrance well before daylight only to join a conga line of cars. I guess lots of people want to be there first, and I can imagine catching the sunrise is also a big draw. Somehow the park absorbed everyone with plenty of room to spare. We did another eight or so miles, much more a stroll in friendly company this time, catching some of the iconic greatest-hit snapshots from this photogenic place.