My first Thanksgiving in the States was spent in Moab, Utah. We took off Wednesday afternoon heading towards Durango for a nights sleep. On the trip we tried to only eat at micro breweries so in Durango we visited Steam Works. Durango has a very picturesque city center which we explored briefly in the freezing temperatures. We played some pool after the dinner at Steam Works.
On the second day we drove towards Blanding, UT. I had found a guide to sandstone bouldering outside Blanding on DrTopo. We had lunch at a gas station/supermarket in Monticello, which was what we could find that was open. After a microwaved burrito we were ready for some bouldering. The DrTopo guide did not have a very clear description about how to get to the boulders. We were supposed to drive a certain number of miles on a paved road and then take left into a dirt road. We missed the dirt road and had to turn around. We then took the wrong dirt road and finally decided to try out the boulders there anyway. Unfortunately, Henrik had a bad shoulder so he only hiked around taking pictures. After a while he offered to go to look for the real place and it was just a bit further back towards Blanding. The area was a bit spread out and we walked around a bit and tried a few problems but we did not find that much nice problems to climb. We called it a day and headed north towards Moab. On the way we took a detour to the Needles overlook to catch the sunset there. There was overcast so we were not sure whether the sun would appear or not. We got lucky and the result is shown in the blogs header. By the way, I had a close encounter with some deer on the way to the outlook. I was just changing station on the radio and all of a sudden several deer were crossing the road. I was able to avoid them but it was a close call. I do not think I have ever been that close to hitting something.
Sunset view over Canyonlands National Park.
In Moab we met Walt's friend Caroline and went to have dinner at one of the micro breweries. It was Thankgiving so there was a special menu for the evening. I had the turkey with gravy and it was really tasty. The plan for the Moab visit was to do some mountainbiking but when we woke up the next morning there was quite a bit of snow and really cold so we gave up the mountainbiking plans and went to Arches National Park, which has around 2000 natural arches. It is a magnifiscent place and we hiked around to the different easily accessible arches during the day.
Me under Delicate Arch, Arches NP.
Henrik on-top of Double Arch, Arches NP.
Sunset at Balancing Rock, Arches NP.
The next day we drove to the northern entrance to Canyonlands National Park. There was fresh snow and the view of the canyons was astonishing. We also visited the ... arch which has a huge drop below it. We had to wait some time before all the other I-think-I-am-a-professional-photographer people had finished their business. When we driving along the road there was a coyote that crossed the road and I had the wrong setting on the camera to get a clear picture and I forgot to change it before it was too late. I learned a lesson there. The dinner was at another microbrewery where the whole ceiling was covered in different outdoor gear - kayaks, parachutes, bikes, ...
A cairn at Canyonlands NP.
A view through an arch at Canyonlands NP.
On Sunday we were homebound but we had some stops planned along the way. The first was to drive into Canyonlands from the eastern entrance to go to the areas we had seen from the Needles overlook. We drove as far in as possible and strolled around that place for a while but it was not that magnifiscent so we headed back. On the map there was a place called Indian Creek and to me (and I guess to the others as well) this is known as the crack climbing mecka. We took a rough dirt road and continued for half an hour before we reached the creek where we had to turn around. Still no well known cracks in sight. A bit further along the paved road we saw the area to the left but we did not feel like exploring it since we already had spent an hour looking for the place and we had several hours driving to get home.
The last stop was at the Mesa Verde National Park, which is well known for its ancestral puebloan cliff dwellings. We drove around to some of the sites and worked our trigger fingers on our cameras. It would be nice to go down into the dwellings but we were too late for that and just observed it from a distance.
Cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde NP.
