Other than the Moab Brands everyone in Moab was recommending the bike trails in Dead Horse State Park. So happy we went for a morning ride here. I can see why Moab is a mountain bike riding Mecca. The trails are awesome, really fun. Not too hard, but enough to increase your heart beat and plenty of rocks to maneuver around. I also really like the big slabs of sandstone you ride over. I usually get scared mountain biking because I don’t like just the straight up hills and then worrying about having to go down them. The beginner/intermediate trails we are going on here are all relatively level with short spurts of uphills and downhills making it a perfect place for us to teach the girls and increase our own confidence. When I’ve gone in Tahoe, maybe I haven’t found the right trails yet, but its all about a workout…riding uphill for 20 min straight etc… The trails here are just plain fun. We are really liking the area here and Edwin and I have already discussed coming back here for bike riding trips.
Canyonlands National Park. 12th National Park.
Canyonlands is separated into 3 large canyon areas created by the Green River and the Colorado River. Island in the sky (the north) is where you are up on top of the canyons looking down. The Needles (in the south) is where you are down in the canyon, and the Maze (to the west) is where you are also down inside the canyons but it is only accessible by 4-wheel drive road or by foot. Edwin is really appreciating the vistas. The canyons are nice for a view, but I don’t know, its not really doing it for me here. I think its mainly because we came here after Arches…Arches feels very cool. To quote one of mine and Edwin’s favorite movie quotes in circulation… “I know you can be overwhelmed, and you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?” That’s about how I’m feeling here.
We did climb around whale rock which was a basically a giant sandstone rock to climb around.
We drove to the Grand View overlook where you can see where the other 2 parts of the national park are.
We then drove to the campground to settle in and went to to the Green River overlook and watched the sunset. I remember listening to the Creedence Clearwater song Green River when we drove by the start of it in Wyoming. It ends here as it flows into the Colorado River in Canyonlands National Park.
We returned to hang out and read in the RV as Vera had some of her journal to catch up on.
