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the needles

Canyonlands NP has 2 entrances that are not accessible to each other by car, and we knew we didn't have time to see both. (Word on the street has it that Canyonlands is best enjoyed from the water.) Leaving Arches, we stopped at the visitor center to ask which section would be most different from the things we had already seen. The ranger told us The Needles, unequivocally. She almost mentioned that it was much less frequented. Bonus points in my book after how horribly crowded Arches had been.

We set off and had a beautiful drive through fields of wildflowers and amazing rock structures that took shapes I'd never seen. Sadly, I don't have a good picture of them and I certainly don't have the words to adequately describe them. You'll have to go drive US 191 yourself.
We got to the visitor center there and asked for some hiking recommendations. The ranger warned us that we needed to consider how much daylight we had and probably would not be able to hike that far. Apparently, everywhere we went on this trip we had "stupid, naive girls" written all over our faces. Knowing that we had a good 3 hours + of daylight left, we headed out to the trailhead at Elephant Hill which takes you into the Needles formations and decided to hike till about 5:30, see how far we got and then turn around.

A few raindrops fell and the sky looked menacing as we set out, but as long as there was no thunder, we decided to go for it. Laura and I were both in ridiculous moods and we had a fabulous hike. All of the formations we saw reminded us of cartoon characters and video games. It sounds silly to record, but it was a delightful, silly hike with amazing scenery and a rainbow on the hike out.The smurf hut we found on the way.

Labels: roadtrip '10, travel

posted by CP @ 11:56 AM 0 thoughts