CANYONLANDS NATIONAL PARK 2.0 (UT)

FRIDAY - Originally I had planned a short 75-mile moving day, that was until I realized I would be asking ROVER to tow THE POD up and over at least four Rocky Mountain passes at over 10,000' elevation.

ROVER hasn't been "feeling his oats" lately, so I changed our route to head over into Utah before traveling north and approaching our next National Park visit back in Colorado.

So instead of a grueling 75-mile climb up into the mountains we took a 165-mile detour over into Utah and avoided the mountains all together.

That detour put us very near a National Park that we visited 2-years ago. It's one of Utah's "Mighty Five" and there is a district of the park we didn't get around to visiting last time. Well this time we are going to get a "one day" visit to The Needles District of Canyonlands National Park.

THE NEEDLES DISTRICT
OF
CANYONLANDS NATIONAL PARK

AND
BEARS EARS NATIONAL MONUMENT

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This formation is called Church Rock and is located at the intersection of US191 and UT211.
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After turning onto UT211 we still have 38-miles to go to reach the campground.
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The first 31.5-miles has you traveling through the Bears Ears National Monument.
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There are many interesting rock formations along the drive...
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...and I'd classify some locations as downright scenic.
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These two spires way off in the distance reminds me of Monument Valley.
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After 31.5-miles of driving down UT211 we've finally reached the National Park boundary.
Anybody want to guess why there's such a gap between "National" and "Park"?
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Far off in the distance you can see the "needles" this district is named after.
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We are getting close to the campground now.
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We quickly unhooked ROVER from THE POD and took off sightseeing.
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The first thing we did was travel on a 2.5-mile gravel road to Elephant Hill,
only to find out we'd have to hike 5-miles to see it and Tricia's wearing flip flops.
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There were still quite a few photo worthy formations along the gravel road.
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We got back to the paved Scenic Road and found these two waiting at the end.
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THE POD is happy that ROVER is back and so are we. We are tired!
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Our site has quite a lot of real estate between the tent pad and the parking area.

We have two more nights before our National Park reservation begins, so we'll have to find a couple other places to stay before then.

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