Today I got a reasonably early start, which is easy to do with the hot sun shining in your face first thing in the morning. I drove into Natural Bridges and followed the 9 mile loop road around White Canyon. It's an interested place, 2 of the 3 largest natural bridges in the world are located here (Number 2 & 3 on the list). You can drive around and see all of them with only a short walk from the car. To get down to then however is another story. On one trail you have to walk down steep stone carved stairs and then climb down 3 ladders. The other two aren't this hard to get to but they were hard enough that I would have spent half the day here so I decided to save these for another trip.

Next I drove off to Canyonlands National Park, another place that I knew nothing about (I was guessing it had something to do with canyons though...). On the way there you drive by a place called Newspaper rock, a place with petroglyphs dating back to B.C. times. It is the largest petroglyph area I have seen yet. On the face of this cliff there is an area about 30 x 20 feet covered with petroglyphs. There were a couple of interesting things that I noticed about it. First off, there were several figures of what looked like human footprints but most had 6 toes instead of five. And there were several figures of men ridding what looked like horses yet horses weren't in this area until the 14 or 1500's I think (they were introduced by the Spanish from what I remember). There was also a figure of what looked like a spaceman but I'm sure it was a much later addition.

After that I arrived in Canyonlands. Like the name implies, it is a place of expansive canyons. I mean a really big place. It is the largest National Park in Utah but it's also the least developed. There is a paved road but it only goes through a small fraction of the south end of the park. There are many dirt roads but most require a high clearance 4-wheel drive vehicle, which several nearby places rent. It was already mid afternoon so I just drove around on what roads I could.

At one point, near the beginning of the park road, I stopped to take a video survey (which I've been doing all along so I can remember which places to come back to). I did my normal panoramic shot with a little narrative and started to get back into the car when I noticed that a half moon was rising over the medium sized red sandstone butte in front of me. I got out the big camera as fast as I could and got a really cool shot. I had to move fast because the moon travels really fast, about the width of your extended hand in about 20 minutes. I don't know whether it will print out with the moon showing or not but if it does it's going to be a really cool picture.

After that I drove around some more. The area I drove around in was quite different. There were areas of red sandstone and then yellow sandstone. And then there were areas where there were these strange sculpted rock formations that looked sort of like mushrooms. And at the end of the road there was a small winding canyon with a rim full of these 'mushrooms'. At one place here I got another shot of the moon rising over one of the sculptures. Hopefully it too will print out Ok.

Canyonlands was also littered with dead Juniper trees.

After that I decided to head for the north area of the park, about 70 miles to the north. You have to leave the park and re-enter at the north end to get there, but it was on the way to Arches National Park, my next destination so I decided to go there for sunset.

I drove like mad to get there, at on point taking this winding road at about 3 times the speed limit. Luckily it was the middle of nowhere and as I had guessed, most of the traffic would be going the same way as me so I could use both sides of the road in the curves and corners (I could see far enough ahead most of the time to know there were no cars coming the opposite direction).

I got there about 15 minutes too late but I took the shot anyway. It was probably the fastest I have ever set up the camera and taken a picture. All in all I think I did it in around 10 minutes (it usually takes at least 20).

The north end of the park is quite different. Instead of being down in the canyon, you're up on a high plateau called 'Island in the Sky' which overlooks all the smaller canyons. As far as you look out you can see canyons everywhere. You're up above most of these so you can see both the canyon plateaus as well as the canyon walls. It's a really cool place.

After that I drove back into Moab Utah and found a place to stay. It's Friday night and past sunset so all the campgrounds are already full. This will be better though to get a good nights rest because I am planning on getting an early start.

Arches National Park in case you don't know, is probably one of the most spectacular places in Utah. If you've ever seen a Roadrunner cartoon then you have an idea of what Arches looks like. There are natural bridges and arches all over the place, 2,000 named ones in the park alone as well as lots of windows (holes in rocks) and balanced rocks (stacked rocks). By the way, the different between a natural bridge and an arch is that a natural bridge is over water otherwise it is called an arch. Other than that, they are the same.