Moab, Utah is billed as the outdoors activity centre for Western USA and it sure has lots of things to do. Our campground was filled with Jeeps that were taken off road into the amazing red canyons that surround Moab. There are extensive mountain bike trails, walking trails and the most fabulous scenery to top it all off.
It was a nice campground but filled as all the campgrounds are with dogs. I would say 90% of campers have dogs and of those 50% have more than one dog, sometimes three. And at times they can be a real nuisance especially when our site is next to a yappy dog. Americans seem to have an obsession with dogs unlike other countries. Yesterday we saw a medium sized dog in a pushchair being taken into a restaurant where apparently that was OK for it to be at the table in the pushchair being given the odd snack while mama and papa ate their meal.
The first day in Moab we drove into Canyonlands NP and visited a small part of it called Island in the Sky, a huge mesa cut off by the Colorado River and its tributary the Green River. It was a very clear day and we could see hundreds of miles.
After a day at rest we returned to sightseeing and went to Arches NP where there are over 2500 arches. We only saw a few. We hiked up to see Window Arches
Then we saw one of the most famous - Delicate Arch
and then did a long hike to see the longest arch in the world, Landscape Arch.
Arches NP is a true wonder of the world. Not just the arches but the lovely smooth rounded red rock called slick rock that is everywhere. We got into the park early as even out of the main season it was very crowded by lunchtime and parking spaces were difficult to find by the main sights.
Then alas it was time to move North to Salt Lake City. Not a lot to see there but time to relax and stop up for the next sate of our journey./ We visited downtown SLC and saw the amazing State Capitol modelled after the one in Washington DC. SLC is bounded on one side by the snow capped Wasatch Mountains the most westerly range of the Rockies and on the other side by hundreds of miles of desert.
We went into the Mormon temple square but were not allowed to visit the temple as we were not Mormons.
We caught up on the history of the Mormons and the great trek from persecution in the eastern USA until Brigham Young the leader arrived at the spot below and proclaimed 'This is the right place" and so they settled. There is a State park at the spot called "This is the The Right Place" with lots of statues and a view out over the Great Salt Lake.
Not a must see place SLC but a convenient stopover on the way North where were heading.
After a long long drive from SLC we arrived at the Grand Teton NP just south of Yellowstone NP in Wyoming. And what a place. The warm weather we had been enjoying for the past month has gone. It gets down to freezing at night and high sixties during the day. But the scenery is majestic. We are camped right on Jackson lake and this is the view from the edge of the lake.
The Teton range rise straight from a bowl in the mountains (called a hole in these here parts). We are surrounded on all sides by high mountains but the Tetons are the biggest and most majestic with Grand Teton rising over 13000 ft. Snowed capped with glaciers flowing down their sides they rise above the hole for some 50 miles. The continental divide is just few miles away. The Grand Teton NP drains via the Snake River to the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean while over the hill in Yellowstone NP the waters drain via the Yellowstone River to the Missouri River and eventually the Gulf of Mexico.
Yellowstone NP is next.
