Best of the Southwest – Canyonlands – Day 7 – Island in the Sky

We were at the halfway point of our 14-day Southwest expedition and it was time to do some laundry.  Many motels, like the Super 8 where we were staying, offer a convenient change-operated laundry service.   So we headed over to the Wells Fargo bank on Main Street in the middle of downtown and got a roll of quarters, loaded up the Maytag washer with our funky trail clothes, and then took a stroll around the Mill Creek area on the east side of town.  We wanted to get away from the touron part of Moab and see how the locals lived.

The houses were mostly unpretentious, tidy, one-floor bungalows.  The yards were well tended and many driveways sported ATV’s and small boats.  The historic homes, like the Taylor House, were made of faded red brick with wooden wrap-around porches.

Arthur Taylor House – Built 1894

“The Arthur Taylor House is an intact late 19th century farm complex with a two-story main house of brick. Its size and sophistication, in comparison with the crude homes of most of Moab’s citizens, mark the importance of ranching in the area during the late 19th century.

The Old Taylor Homestead is one of the few remaining historical and architectural assets of the town of Moab, which has suffered the baleful effects of uranium booms and tourist infestations.”

Adapted from the NRHP nomination submitted in 1980.

Along meandering Mill Creek we discovered a lovely paved  greenway trail lined by shady cottonwood trees that led us past Swanny City Park where the Farmers Market is held on Fridays from 4-7.

One thing that was really nice about Moab was the free stuff.  For instance, parking in Moab is free and easy.

After finishing our laundry chores we drove downtown and grabbed some breakfast at one of Moab’s newest and most popular eateries, the Peace Tree Cafe on Main Street.  Jimmy ordered a breakfast sandwich and the bun was stamped with a branded peace sign.

We decided to check out some more of the town center before heading over to Canyonlands National Park, starting with the Information Center where the friendly staff suggested that we pay a visit to the Moab Museum, just a block away.  Jimmy and I were badly in need of our local museum fix, so off we went along the airport runway-wide E. Center Street, to a small and rather bland brick museum sitting across from the stately Grand County Office Building.

                                                  Photo Courtesy of the Museum of Moab

The Moab Museum was a fun and informative place to explore during the heat of the day, or after a morning hike.  It’s run by a charming hippie lady named Barbara Jackson who only charged $5 for an experience that was priceless.  

                                                 Photo Courtesy of the Museum of Moab

http://www.moabmuseum.org/

Barbara had small rooms that showcased: paleontology, archaeology, geology, uranium mining, Anglo and Indian artifacts, the Civilian Conservation Corps camps in the area, adventure tourism, the Sagebrush Rebellion versus Ecodefenders, historic photos, a 1928 player piano, big cattle companies, the 1881 “Pinhook Battle” up in Castle Valley fought between the local Utes and several ranchers, the Old Spanish Trail, and the storied history of movie making in Professor Valley.  We watched a captivating twenty minute film about the actors and players who filmed many of the old Westerns around Moab that had us both spellbound.

On the second floor we found some fine Southwest photos; an outstanding assortment of polished stones in red velvet display cases; the first doctor’s office run by Dr. JW Williams ($150 a year) who also sold drugs, books, stationery, Navajo baskets, wagons and buggies; and a very detailed re-creation of what the inside of a house in Moab would have looked like in the early 1900’s.

If there was one common denominator to the national parks in the Southwest, it was road construction.  The summer season is when they improve the roads, so no matter where you go, you should pretty much count on doing the “one lane ahead” dance which involves sitting in a long line of RV’s and buses waiting for a pilot car to slowly come along and lead you through the work area. 

It was about forty miles from Moab to the park entrance at Island in the Sky through a world of crumpled and tilted redrock.  And it turned out to be a rather curious drive.  We passed about 15 miles of orange road cones where no one was working.  That’s a lot of road cones.  Just imagine having to place each one in the middle of the road and then maintain them each day.  And it raised a few questions, like why would you need so many road cones, and where the hell would you find that many cones?  We figured it probably added a helluva lot to the cost of the project.  And we couldn’t figure out why they would start dropping them on the road about twelve miles before the actual project area.  It was stupid as shit and made the drive extremely annoying.

I have been remiss in not discussing camping.  There, are, of course, a wide assortment of public and private commercial campgrounds throughout the Southwest.  But for those who want to get away from the crowds, enjoy the total solitude in the back of beyond, and don’t need the amenities that come with a campground – you know, like bathrooms and water – you are allowed to primitive camp anywhere you like for up to 14 days in any national forest in America for free, unless it is clearly posted that you can’t.  It is the same for all Bureau of Land Management Lands (BLM).  And most of the lands we were passing through were either National Forest or BLM managed land.  BUT, not Park Service lands!  You have to always camp in a campground or obtain a backcountry camping permit to camp in a National Park.

There are quite a few really good hikes in Island in the Sky but we didn’t have time to do them all. And I knew from past experience that some of them were strenuous and quite difficult.

 

As always, our first stop in the park was the Visitor Center.  The one at Canyonlands is not up to snuff in relation to many other national parks, like nearby Arches, but they have a short movie that does a nice job of explaining the park’s history and geology, and there was an okay gift shop.  It was definitely worth the 45-minute stop.  And they had air conditioning!

We began our hiking day at the south end where there was an excellent viewpoint overlooking The Needles section of the park to the south that we would be visiting the next day.  And there was an excellent rim trail that began at the Overlook and offered mega-views of the Green River.  After checking out the South Rim, we slowly worked our way back, doing several short hikes in different landscapes, thus getting a good cross-section of this magnificent park.

The park trails are works of art, some of the finest in America, and undoubtedly the work of a real artisan.  They had these huge sandstone block cairns and beautiful chiseled steps through the slickrock.

Having visited the park many times before, I knew the best hikes to do, given the few hours we had there to play.

And let’s not forget the heat.  The temperature was hovering around 100 degrees and there were very few clouds in the sky.  Sun exposure could become an issue real fast.

• Grand View Point – Easy walking along the canyon edge to the end of Island in the Sky Mesa with panoramic views.  (2 miles – 1.5 hours) 
• Below the rim, we could see segments of the 100-mile White Rim Road looping around and below the Island in the Sky mesa top. Four-wheel-drive trips usually take two to three days, and mountain bike trips take three to four days.  When the weather is dry, the White Rim Road is moderately difficult for high-clearance, four-wheel-drive vehicles. The steep, exposed sections of the Shafer Trail, Lathrop Canyon Road, Murphy’s Hogback, Hardscrabble Hill, and the Mineral Bottom switchbacks make the White Rim loop a challenging mountain bike ride, and require extreme caution for both vehicles and bikes during periods of bad weather.
  From our lofty perch in the sky, a lone jeep creeping slowly along the tiny buff ribbon of dirt road below looked like the Mars Rover.

• White Rim Overlook – Walk to an east-facing overlook for some breathtaking views of the Colorado River, Monument Basin, and La Sal Mountains.  Limited trailhead parking. (1.8 miles – 1.5 hours) 

• Mesa Arch – Easy Walk to the arch at the edge of the canyon.  Great place to snap a photo.  (1 mile – 1 hour)

• Whale Rock – Short but somewhat steep walk up Whale rock leads to views of Upheaval Dome and the surrounding area. (1 mile – 1 hour)

We noticed that all of the Southwest national parks are now emphasizing the importance of what the Island in the Sky folks called Cryptobiotic Soil Crusts, the black, knobby crust often seen growing on the top of the soil, like an alien fungus.

When I lived at Grand Canyon, we called them cryptogamic soils, but the Parkies apparently can no longer agree on what to call them.  We heard at least three different terms used in three different parks and it was confusing as hell.  But they all could at least agree that the soils were an important feature of the Colorado Plateau.  Cryptobiotic soils hold moisture, prevent erosion and deliver nutrients to the desert environment.  The slow-growing crust is easily broken and crushed by tracks of any kind.

On the trail to Mesa Arch we encountered an excellent interpretive sign that explained why we needed to protect these soils and it asked people not to walk on them, because they were like arctic tundra, and when you walked on them, you were destroying an interwoven community of living organisms that has existed for thousands of years, and which would take another thousand years to grow back if damaged by clumsy big feet.   As I was reading the sign I noticed a trail literally right in front of the sign where hordes of idiot tourons had walked right through fragile soil like mindless cattle.

On our way back from the park we made a 4-mile detour to Dead Horse Point State Park where we caught an amazing sunset.  We had checked the precise time for sunset at the Park Service Visitor Center, so we were right on time, along with several hundred other sun worshipers.  This was a very popular place to watch the sun go down while the Canyonlands and the horseshoe bend in the Colorado River turned neon red.

After the sun went down, we hopped in the car and headed quickly back to Moab.  It was beer-thirty and what better place could we choose to satisfy our terrible thirst than the Moab Brewery?  It was a Monday night and the place was totally rocking.

The Moab Brewery is a classic local favorite.  The food wasn’t anything special but they had all of the Utah micro-brews, including almost every IPA brewed in the West.  This was where the Moabites went to eat and drink and there were very few tourons.  It was a cavernous building resembling a warehouse with high ceilings from which they had hung boats and bikes.

They even had several tricked-out jeeps with dummy drivers scattered around the dining tables.  It’s a unique Southwest hangout and a must see when visiting crazy Moab.

This was going to be our last night in Moab and we had planned to check out some live shitkicker music at the Blu Pig which is the only place in town offering live music seven days a week.  But Jimmy and I were tired after a very long and action-packed day.  So, we headed back to the hotel and sat in the hot tub, drinking boat drinks and watching the star show on the sky tube instead.  A person can only have just so much fun.

Next Stop – The Needles