My Hike to Mesa Arch

The Island in the Sky portion of Canyonlands National Park is less than thirty miles from Arches National Park.  Most of the natural arches are found in Arches, but Canyonlands has a few arches also.  One of them is Mesa Arch which frames a beautiful view and is supposed to be spectacular at sunrise, when the sun lights the underside of the arch and makes it a bright orange.

I didn't get there until nearly midday, but I enjoyed both the hike and the arch anyway.  It is only a half mile round trip to visit the arch so it did have lots of people on it, always a negative for me. And it made it almost impossible to get a decent shot through the arch since everyone needed to have their picture taken just where I needed to stand. But this was the only time the park felt crowded - the rest of the time I was either by myself or with less than ten people. So this is definitely a trail you should hike very early or late. There will always be a small group of people waiting for the sun to light the "ceiling" of the arch, even when the sun rises at 5:00 A.M.

This was across the road from the parking lot

This vetch was very common but made a lovely composition along the trail

These rocks almost looked like piles of cookie dough to me

Another beautiful feature seen from the trail

A trail view of a rock formation I took from several different locations. 

Some large lubines made a beautiful color combination with the orange soil

Different layers of rock are colored differently

Mesa Arch

The view through Mesa Arch - not the best time of the day for pictures

This tree spoke to me and I took several perspectives of it

This structure was on the way to Mesa Arch but I climbed after I got there
and found a better perspective of it

Structures seen on the way back

The day kept getting more cloudy and I was afraid the predicted rain would soon come

A clearer part of the sky let me get this lovely picture

Soon I was at the last set of steps before the parking lot

Then I went back to my campsite and finished packing.  This is Horsethief Camp, a BLM campsite with 57 sites.  I got one of the last three sites when I got there at 3:00 P. M. on Thursday.  This is one of the few cheap places to stay - $15 a night or $7.50 per night with a senior pass - and is less than 30 minutes from Canyonlands, Arches, and Dead Horse Point State Park plus other hiking and biking trails, so it is very popular.

My camp

I went to the library in Moab for a while and edited pictures and looked at e-mail and Facebook before heading out, STILL without rain.  But within the hour I got into showers and one little mixed rain and snow shower.  I also had to ride behind a snowplow for a while, although it was not yet clearing the road. But I did enjoy a shower and a real comfortable bed in a motel just south of Salt Lake City.  And I had time the next morning to visit Antelope Island State Park in Salt Lake before arriving at Red Rock Lakes NWR.   I'll tell you about that next blog.  

Since I'm getting further and further ahead on adventures, I thought I'd throw in couple of extra blogs over the next few weeks and try to get closer to catching up. I photographed twin yearling moose today and a badger yesterday as well as MANY pictures of birds, and the scenery. 

I also added my Facebook page, since I often post pictures that really don't fit into blogs there. See it to the right of the blog. 

A Virtual Hike on the Grand View Point Overlook Trail

Saturday, May 9

The forecast was for a rainier and cooler day than was Friday, so I chickened out  of camping, and got up with the dawn to pack  and leave. But then the sun came up and the day was mostly clear, so I went back to my original plan to go hiking and take pictures. I still planned to go further north and get a motel that evening.

The lovely sky changed my mind about leaving

After grabbing a quick breakfast, I set off for the very end of the road in Island in the Sky, the Grand View Point Overlook.  I got there a little after seven o'clock and found I had the mile long trail to myself. (This condition lasted almost the whole way in and it wasn't until I was almost back out that I saw more than a handful of people.) And most of them only went about 200 yards down the trail before turning around and thus missed most of the spectacular views that occured in three directions.

Come along on a virtual hike with me along the Island in the Sky Plateau, between the Green and Colorado Rivers. The trail is one mile each way but I'm sure it took me almost three miles to complete it due to all the little detours I had to make to take these pictures.  But that won't tire YOU out.

The stacked stones or cairns mark the trail which is mostly over rock

I tried to take at least one picture at every cairn

Sometimes steps led up or down so the trail was easy

This was a little opening in the rock

This  yellow wildflower was just starting to bloom

Many of the views were too long for my camera to do them justice

I took this formation from many places in the park - this was from a side trail to the mile-iong one

This view was also from the same side trail

This flower was growing in a crack from the same place I took the previous two pictures

I took this scene over and over, hoping for more light in the carved out portion

A highly magnified shot so you can see details of distant features

Closer views along the trail

A western subspecies of the blue-gray gnatcatcher

Another long view 

This was one of two guys that passed me near the end of the trail who is now
 enjoying the distant view

The sandstone was often wondrously carved

This is the real color of this Indian paintbrush if was fluorescing in the sun

A balancing rock in the making

Some hoodoo- like rocks at the end of the trail

A little arch at the end of the trail

The tenacity of plants always amazes me

The light was better looking off to trail right to show the fantastic colors in these formations

The rocks and vegetation often made pleasing arrangements

I planned to finish packing up my campsite, then go to the Moab library and put up some pictures on my Facebook page before leaving to go to Salt Lake City, where I planned to get a motel room.  But I decided I still had time to visit Mesa Arch.  You'll have to wait until my next blog to see it.

By the way, I do a lot of Facebook entries about my daily life. I put a link to my page on the right on my blog.  Just scroll down for some of my favorite links to find it, as will as links to more of my pictures.

When this blog comes out, I will have been at the Refuge one week.  During that time I've repaired or replaced any bluebird boxes that needed it and collected my first batch of data, done some cleaning around the refuge, run errands, and today got to go watch how we milk eggs and milt from the grayling fish to obtain the eggs we incubate. Tomorrow I'll go learn how to remove sick eggs so that we ca keep as many healthy eggs as possible. And yesterday I watched an exciting fight between bluebirds and tree swallows which I'll try to show you soon. And I have two more little adventures from my trip to share with you.  And pictures of the grayling egg project. And I'll have pictures of the nursery project. Life is definitely exciting and interesting.

A Visit To Canyonland, Part II: The Needles

I got to Canyonlands around noon so first found my campsite and set up my tent. At the back of my site, I discovered two cedar trees a hammock's width apart, so also set up my hammock and spent a few hours reading and enjoying the warm air.

My accessible campsite

Soon the light was getting prettier and I wanted to see more of this amazing place up close.  So I went off on the auto tour and took a short hike to Pothole Point.  This is an area where the slickrock holds ephemeral pools that hold whole ecosystems of plants and animals.  They were all dry when I was there.  You can go on this hike with me in my next post.

This area consists of widely spaced slick rock  formations,  almost looking like huge, fantastic buildings, scattered across a relatively flat ground.

Children playing on the slickrock formation behind the Visitor Center

These rocks were at the beginning of a four-wheel drive road to the Colorado River

When I stopped at the end of the auto tour to check out the scenery and trails, I was approached by this begging raven.  I spent a lot of time with him and his friend. When I got out my snack bar, he immediately flew up to me and begged. Then when I got back to the car, he was sitting here BUT my jacket, which had been stuffed behind the front seat, was on the ground by the car.

After coming back and grabbing a quick bite to eat, I went up the part of the Squaw Canyon Trail, that climbs the huge slickrock hill between the two camping loops, to watch the sunset. There weren't enough clouds in the wes go make a good sunset, but the clouds in the east turned color.

Rock cairns mark the trail

The trail went up through this crack in the rock. 

View looking east as the sun set

Then I immediately hiked back to the evening program which was held on top of a rock formation in my camping loop.  The ranger was from this area, of Mormon stock, and told how her great grandfather was part of a group of Mormons that colonized this region.  She also gave us information on the geological and political history of the area and wished that the park could be extended to the mountains on each side of it.  She was an interesting speaker and I enjoyed the program.  I walked back to my camp under a sky full of brilliant stars.

Getting ready for the evening's program

It was a very enjoyable, albeit long day.  After I left here, I had two more days of driving of around 1300 miles to join up with some of my friends at another favorite place, Caddo Lake in East Texas. 

On the personal front, I've had my first carpal tunnel surgery and will have the second November  20.  Then I'll have my left rotator cuff surgery December 4.  So I probably will be putting out blogs only sporadically, although I'm trying to get the pictures edited and blogs up  in advance of my surgeries.

For the rest of my pictures, if you are in the mood, visit by album.