Canyonlands NP (Needles District), Utah

September 6, 2022

We really enjoyed our time in Capitol Reef, but it was time to move on. We left pretty early in the morning and were rewarded with a beautiful drive through the dramatic Utah landscape along the way to our next destination. 

After a time, the landscape became more desolate.

Our destination was the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park, and we passed briefly through Moab on the way. We would have liked to explore more in this area, but it wasn't in the schedule this time around. Perhaps another time. 

Interesting mural on the bike shop adjoining the gas station we stopped at.

Driving through Moab

Hole in the Rock roadside attraction, just south of Moab. We didn't stop here.

Wilson's Arch, also south of Moab. We stopped here for lunch, but didn't climb up to the arch. It was quite hot out.

Our journey to Canyonlands was going smoothly until we turned off highway 191 onto Utah 211 which is the only way into Canyonlands (so we thought) . . . 

Oh great--a detour through a narrow winding mountain road! Well this was going to be interesting. At least the detour road promised to be paved, but it meant that we were going to have to go up through the mountains and then back down again.  Oh well, not much choice here. So, we filled up the gas tank in Monticello and headed off into the mountains.  Turns out, the road was plenty wide, and it was a surprisingly nice drive. As an added benefit, it was 20 degree cooler (it was getting into the 90s by now).  The road wound through national forest land and eventually brought us back to Utah 211 so we could continue to our camp.

It was nice to see some lush green (and cool) landscape again.

At the top!

Down below is where we are headed. It sure looks hot down there.

Back down in the desert, we were greeted with mile after mile of desert canyons.

We stayed at Needles Outpost which is a little private campground adjacent to Canyonlands National Park and surrounded by other federal land. The property included a campground, a tiny general store (think ice cream and trinkets) as well as the only (expensive) gas pumps for many miles.   The camp was very basic--they had no amenities, excepting a small bath house, and they trucked in water from 80 miles away.   One side of our campsite was open to the desert with rock formations visible in the distance and the other side viewed a large smooth rock formation that looked like it would be fun for kids to climb on.  When we arrived after 3pm it was hot (upper nineties), but it cooled down nicely in the evening.  This was a very quiet campground and was fairly empty when we arrived.

We weren't sure what point this sign was trying to make.

Just us and the desert (and a few tent campers that showed up later)

That evening we had a wonderful sunset followed by a clear night - great time for Rick to take more night photos!

Quiet and calm at dusk

The moon illuminated the camper at last light with stars above.

With the moon lighting the rocks behind our camper the stars were on full display tonight.

And while Rick played with night photos - Julie spent a quiet evening reading her Kindle on the deck under the stars.

The next morning, we headed off to Canyonlands National Park where the attendant at the gate warned us to take a lot of water and be careful - forecast was for the 100s. Yikes! We chose the Slickrock hike which promised the most bang for the buck in terms of its scenery to effort ratio. It was mostly level-ish, not too long (3.2-mile lollypop), and it provided sweeping views in every direction. We really enjoyed this hike, and we finished it in time before it got too hot.

Much of the path was on the slickrock. Cairns (small piles of rocks) marked the trail.

You can see the needles formations in the background.

Don't want to touch this prickly pear!

Julie really liked these pancake-shaped formations.

Quite the dramatic canyon.

There were several potholes in the rock, some of which contained mini gardens.

Quite an enjoyable hike - but is was starting to get HOT!

Afterwards, we spent some quality time at the visitor center to cool down in their air conditioning.  Since it was close to 100F by now, we decided we were finished with outdoor activities and headed back to the camper for lunch.

Passed the Wooden Shoe Arch on the way.

Well, now was the time to test if we could run our air conditioning off our batteries and solar (solar was not in short supply here).  We closed the camper up, covered all the windows with Reflectix (reflective bubble wrap) and turned on the air conditioning.  We set the thermostat for 89 degrees (believe it or not that actually felt considerably cooler than the 100+ outside). After 4 1/2 hours, our batteries were down to 30% and they were getting smoking hot, so we decided to shut the air conditioning off.  We do have a generator we could have dug out from the back of the truck (Rick didn't expect to use it much - so it is the most inaccessible thing we own), but we wanted to see what the solar and batteries could do. Well, we concluded that in temperatures over 100 with the hot desert sun beating down on us, it was just too much to ask of our setup. Plus, it is really not that enjoyable sitting in a mostly dark 89 degree camper all afternoon anyway. 

So...we ended up opening the windows again at around 5:30pm and waiting around until the sun set for things to cool down while plotting our next move. Did we want to hide out in a dark camper with the generator running all afternoon (assuming the air conditioner could actually keep up) the next three days? Not really.

The great thing about a house having wheels is that you can simply move it someplace else whenever you want. Conveniently, we had already planned on going into Monticello the next day for church at noon (43 miles drive back through the mountains). So, we left early after breakfast and started scoping out free dispersed camping (boondocking) locations in the national forest on the way to Monticello. We found a few contenders and decided upon a secluded spot up a hill. When we returned to camp in the afternoon, we had a quick lunch, packed up, and headed out. As we stopped at the office to let them know we were leaving early, they told us this was the hottest week they had had since June. Just last week it had been in the upper 80s. Oh well, you can't control the weather, and at least we got to drive through the park and take in one of the most scenic hikes.

So off to the cooler weather of the nearby mountains for us. . . .

There is a google group email list which can send you an email when there is a new blog post. Instructions for signing up here: Subscribe OR directly join here: Google Group