The spot we camped in last night is probably the nicest location we’ve camped on this trip. That even includes our beach camping at Sea Rim State Park on the Gulf of Mexico. We pack up and are on the road in the early morning surrounded by canyons, buttes, washes, and mountains. This reminds us of a song that has the line, “If you want space, move to Utah.” We are on the road for 1 hour 14 minutes before we spy a car heading in the same direction on the road as us. Only a handful of vehicles passed going the other way.
Our destination for today is the Needles part of Canyonlands National Park. It’s about 35 miles off the through road on this scenic dead end which ends at a few overlooks. We arrive around midday and get the last available campsite next to the park and it includes internet and showers. Two things we’ve been lacking recently. Our last showers were in Kanab a few days ago, but our last useable Internet was at Kathe and Stan’s back in Tucson. Campgrounds list that they have wifi yet it’s often so terrible that one cannot even get or send email! Wells spends time updating our blog and uploading more photos to Facebook. He attempts to make a reservation for the campground at Shenandoah National Park in VA for May 4 where we are planning on meeting up with our daughter, Marni, who lives in the Washington, DC area. No luck since the campground is full. Now we need to determine where we can meet up with her.
Later in the afternoon once it’s a bit cooler and the sun is not so high in the sky we head out on a short hike of roughly 2 ½ miles, Slick Rock Trail. The views are of so many interesting geological features of the Needles part this huge park. The trail is almost totally on rock with plenty of ups and downs. The trail is marked with rock cairns not far apart. Even so we are constantly looking for the next set of cairns as not to get turned around. All around us are thundershowers and we every so often head thunder. The rock surface is anything but slick with excellent grip on these rocks. The second half of our hike brings showers but nothing heavy. To our relief the wet rocks are as surefooted as when dry. The hike turns out to be one of the most enjoyable we’ve done on the trip to date.
We get back to the truck a few minutes before sunset and we head to a Ranger program in the park campground. It’s on the messages left on the rock walls from the ancients of the Southwest.
Seeing North America 