National Parks

Yellowstone: Mammoth Hot Springs

Posted on August 28, 2016 by Heather Gebbia

If you are following along and missed my first 2 posts about Yellowstone, you can find them here: Yellowstone: Geysers and Hot Springs and Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.

After our stay in West Yellowstone, we moved up to the little town of Gardiner, Montana which is at the north entrance to Yellowstone. Yellowstone is a huge park and it seemed to work out best for us to move to different sections of the park rather than driving for several hours each day.

My parents were still with us for the first couple of days in Gardiner. We stayed at Rocky Mountain RV Park. They had a cute little mini golf course that the kids enjoyed playing with Gramma and Grampa.

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Gardiner was a really cute town just like West Yellowstone. We enjoyed walking around town, checking out souvenir shops and eating great pizza.

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The Roosevelt Arch was cool.

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Also the beautiful Yellowstone River runs through town.

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Gardiner is very close to the Mammoth Hot Springs section of Yellowstone. We enjoyed visiting there with Mom and Dad. We walked through the lower and upper terraces. These terraces are so interesting and unique. It’s hard to see in the picture, but there is hot water running down this terrace. It’s amazing to see this and wonder how these steps/terraces were formed. It was so pretty!

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This section looked like snow! But it wasn’t snow; it actually had very hot water running down it.

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My cute parents enjoying their last day at Yellowstone. We had so much fun with them visiting with us! I sure wish they would sell their house and join us on the road. 🙂

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I can’t even explain how amazing this place is. You just have to see it for yourself. I mean here we are in the middle of all these mountains, and smack in the middle of it all is this small section of hot springs creating the most unusual landscape.

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No, that is not snow. It sure looks like it, but it’s actually very hot!

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During the week after Mom and Dad left we visited the Boiling River. That was really fun! You can sit in this river where the water is cold and hot at the same time. Boiling water from the hot springs flows down into the cold Yellowstone River. It felt really weird. Sometimes I would feel a rush of cold river water and the next steaming hot spring water. You had to be careful not to get too close to the hot spring water because it really was boiling.

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Another evening we drove down to Lamar Valley to try to see some wildlife. We were surprised that so far we haven’t seen very much wildlife around Yellowstone besides lots of elk. We heard Lamar Valley would be the place to see some bison and that was the truth! They were everywhere, even in the road! I was so excited to be first in line at this bison traffic stop. What a show!

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The boys earned their Junior Ranger badges at the Mammoth Hot Springs Visitor Center. This is their 20th national park badge!

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On our last day in the Gardiner area we hiked up Mt. Washburn, but I will save that for another post as this one has gotten too long.

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Categories: Montana, National Parks, Wyoming | Tags: ditching suburbia, full time rv'ing, fulltime families, gardiner, mammoth hot springs, Montana, mt, rocky mountain rv park, yellowstone national park | 2 Comments

Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

Posted on August 19, 2016 by Heather Gebbia

This is the second post of several about Yellowstone National Park. If you missed the first one you can find it here: Yellowstone: Geysers and Hot Springs.

While visiting the Old Faithful and Canyon Village areas of Yellowstone we stayed at Yellowstone Grizzly RV Park in West Yellowstone, Montana. This was a really nice RV park. It was expensive, but so is everything else anywhere near Yellowstone. We enjoyed relaxing outside with Mom and Dad after hiking in the park all day.

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The boys loved the playground.

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And we enjoyed this shelter one evening to play a game of Mexican Train dominoes.

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The town of West Yellowstone is super cute. Everything is western themed.

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Jake even got into the western theme and bought himself a cowboy hat!

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We visited the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center where we saw several grizzlies actively playing. The wolves were all asleep, and usually when we go to zoos the bears are usually sleeping too. But at this place the bears were so active which made it lots of fun to watch them.

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Anyway let’s talk about the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River. We parked at the Artist Point parking lot. Artist Point is a beautiful viewpoint looking down the canyon toward Lower Falls.

Artist Point

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After enjoying the view for a little while, we headed down the Rim Trail to get closer and better views of the falls. This hike had some beautiful view points.

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We went down Uncle Tom’s Trail which is a staircase with 328 steps. Going down is easy, coming back up — not so much! But it’s worth it because going down gives you even closer views of the canyon and falls.

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After climbing back up the stairs we continued on down the Rim Trail a little further to see the Upper Falls.

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This was a really nice hike and not too crowded. Most of the crowd only comes to see the viewpoint from the Artist Point parking lot. Hiking the trail gives you many more beautiful views without the crowds.

Categories: Montana, National Parks, Wyoming | Tags: artist point, canyon village, ditching suburbia, full time rv'ing, fulltime families, grand canyon of yellowstone, grizzly & wolf discovery center, lower falls, rim trail, uncle tom's trail, upper falls, west yellowstone, yellowstone grizzly rv, yellowstone national park, yellowstone river | 4 Comments

Yellowstone: Geysers and Hot Springs

Posted on August 14, 2016 by Heather Gebbia

Wow, just wow!! That’s what I have to say about Yellowstone National Park. It is the most unusual and fascinating place I have ever seen! It’s also a huge park and there are so many different areas and features to see. There are mountains and lakes and rivers, geysers and hot springs, a canyon, lots of wildlife, etc. I will write about Yellowstone in a few different posts because there is way too much to put in just one.

This post will be about the various geysers and hot springs we saw in the Old Faithful area. We started at Grand Prismatic Spring which was one thing I wanted to see the most, but it ended up being a little disappointing because it was such a cold morning (35 degrees in August!), and the heat from the springs gave off so much steam that you couldn’t really see the colorful springs. I’ve seen pictures of Grand Prismatic before, but it didn’t look quite the same when we were there because of all the steam. Nevertheless, it was still a spectacular sight to see.

Grand Prismatic Spring

This is Chris walking down one of the boardwalks and there was so much steam everywhere. It’s like the entire ground surface is just boiling under us and steam was everywhere!

From there we went to Old Faithful. You can’t come to Yellowstone and not see Old Faithful because it’s the most popular thing to see. But I was really surprised at how many people only come and see that and don’t venture out and see all the other amazing things to see around Yellowstone. And quite frankly I didn’t think Old Faithful was nearly as interesting as all of the other things we saw at Yellowstone. Don’t get me wrong, Old Faithful is pretty cool because it is so predictable (hence the name). It’s amazing to me how accurately they can predict when it will erupt. We were able to see it erupt 3 times that day from different angles all because the predictions are so accurate.

Front row seats at Old Faithful

Old Faithful from the back side

These hot spring pools were a lot more interesting to me. Look how deep into the earth it goes! I wanted to just dive in there and see how far down it goes, but of course I wouldn’t do that because I don’t want to die right now.

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I loved all these turquoise blue pools. And you could see that they went down so deep into the earth. It looked so mysterious, like I wonder how far down it goes and what is down there? The kids’ junior ranger book has a chart to show how hot the various colored water is, and I was surprised to learn that blue is the hottest. Blue looks like it should be cold.

Sapphire Pool

Artemisia Pool was one of my favorites. We went on a long hike and came upon this geyser that happened to be erupting at the time. That was good timing since it doesn’t erupt very often. On average it erupts anywhere from every 11 hours to every 3 days! I guess we were pretty blessed to come upon that geyser at just the right time.

Artemisia Pool erupting

We walked by later and it was no longer erupting. Still just as beautiful though!

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As we hiked around this section of the park we came across many steaming geysers. It was so incredible to see all this heat and steam coming out of the ground! Yellowstone does a good job of providing many safe hiking trails and boardwalks so you can see these amazing features without getting burned. But some people don’t take the warnings seriously and the worst can happen if you walk off the boardwalks. We’ve heard stories of the tragedies… please follow the rules.

Giant Geyser

Yellowstone is very crowded in the summer. If you want to enjoy the scenery and hike some nice trails, plan to get to the parking lots early. As I mentioned before, I’m surprised at how many people just come to the popular spots like Old Faithful, and don’t even go any further to explore all the amazing features at this park. But that is great for those of us that like to hike the trails! We love to get away from the crowds, and once we started walking off towards the other geysers and hot springs in the area the crowds dispersed.

We went to the Norris Geyser Basin mid-afternoon one day and it was pretty crowded, but not as bad as the Old Faithful area. The Norris area is mostly dormant geysers that don’t seem to erupt very often, but it was still a pretty walk along the boardwalk to view this area.

Norris Geyser Basin

I follow several other blogs of fulltime RV’ing families, one of them is Crazy Family Adventure. They went to Yellowstone last summer and wrote several blog posts about their visit which I saved for future reference. I found their posts about Yellowstone to be so useful in planning our time there. One thing I learned from their blog that we did was the hike to Lone Star Geyser. This is definitely one of the “roads less traveled” in Yellowstone as we did not see very many people there. It is aptly named “Lone Star” as it is a geyser all by itself out in the middle of nowhere. It is quite spectacular though. It only goes off every 3 hours or so and erupts for about 30 minutes. And it is powerful! We timed it pretty well in getting there just about an hour before the main event. I say “main event” because there were a few false alarms where it erupted for a few minutes and then stopped. The other people there said that when it goes, it really goes for a long time. So we waited and it was worth the wait.

Lone Star Geyser before eruption

Long Star Geyser erupting

The kids were able to play in the river while we waited for Lone Star.

I should mention the hike to this geyser was over 2 miles and it was a boring hike. There was not much to see on the hike out there, and then of course you have to hike the same boring 2+ miles back when it’s over. I would recommend riding bikes instead.

This blog post has gotten long enough. I will post some more later about other areas we visited. Stay tuned!

Categories: Montana, National Parks, Wyoming | Tags: artemisia pool, ditching suburbia, fulltime families, geyser, grand prismatic spring, hot springs, lone star geyser, morning glory, norris geyser basin, old faithful, sapphire pool, yellowstone national park | 3 Comments

Grand Teton National Park

Posted on August 10, 2016 by Heather Gebbia

We spent a week at Grand Teton National Park and it is definitely one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. It seems I say that about every place we go, but seriously my pictures do NOT do it justice. If possible, please come and see this place in person. It’s amazing!

Jenny Lake

String Lake

The first hike we did was along String Lake to Leigh Lake. The water is so clear and blue!

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Another day we did an awesome 6 mile hike halfway around Jenny Lake and then up to Inspiration Point. It’s 6 miles out and back, but if you don’t want to hike the whole 6 miles, you can take a shuttle boat across the lake that drops you off where you can hike just to Inspiration Point which is 2 miles round trip. If you’re up for it though, I would highly recommend the entire 6 miles because the Jenny Lake portion of the hike was the best part and the least crowded. We saw a moose and a bear on this hike. Neither one were very close to us so I didn’t get any good pictures, but it was really cool to see those animals in the wild.

Jenny Lake

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Inspiration Point

Chris was so excited about seeing a bear that he decided to go for an early morning hike the next day with Jake to see if they could find any more bears. And they did! They saw a huge grizzly bear that stood up on his hind legs and then started walking towards them. They were a little too scared to take any pictures and just slowly backed away. We had just gone to a bear safety ranger program the previous day and purchased some bear spray, but thankfully they didn’t need to use it. Jake was pretty scared by that bear and didn’t want to go on any more ~~foolish~~ bear hunting expeditions, but I’m not so sure that Chris learned that lesson yet. I told him I didn’t want him to spend the rest of our trip dead, so hopefully he’ll stay away from the bears. 🙂

This trip was made extra special because my parents were able to join us later in the week. After picking them up from the airport we went to visit the cute little town of Jackson Hole. Those are real antlers in that arch!

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This looks like it would be a fun place to come back for some winter time snow skiing!

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Then we headed back into the park and went to see the Chapel of the Transfiguration which was so beautiful!

Chapel of the Transfiguration Picture Window

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We camped at the Colter Bay RV Park inside the Grand Tetons which was really nice and woodsy. Colter Bay Village has lots of facilities available like a grocery store, gas station, restaurants, a marina and a visitor center. We did some hiking around there and also went to the Visitor Center so the kids could get their Junior Ranger badges.

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We also went to the Jackson Lake Lodge which was a fun place to visit. They have a playground and pool that the kids enjoyed. The Jackson Lake dam was also a very nice stop.

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On our last day there we hiked the 4 mile loop around String Lake.

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If you plan to visit there in the busy summer months and want to hike, I would recommend getting to the trailhead parking lots early. They fill up fast!

We had such a great time showing Gramma and Grampa around the Grand Tetons! From there we all went up to West Yellowstone, Montana to begin exploring Yellowstone National Park. Stay tuned for posts about that.

Categories: National Parks, Wyoming | Tags: chapel of the transfiguration, colter bay, colter bay village, ditching suburbia, fulltime families, grand teton national park, inspiration point, jackson hole, jackson lake, jenny lake, junior ranger, leigh lake, string lake, wy, Wyoming | 6 Comments

Rocky Mountain National Park – Day 2

Posted on July 16, 2016 by Heather Gebbia

Our second day at Rocky Mountain National Park was very different from the first day. Day 2 was less crowded, but also very cold and instead of lakes we saw lots of snow.

We drove the scenic Trail Ridge Road and stopped at many of the viewpoints and some hiking trails along the way.

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The higher up in elevation we got the colder it got. They call this the tundra — I called it the frozen tundras. 🙂

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We saw some elk and big horn sheep way off in the distance, but these cute marmots were the only wildlife we saw up close. They were so cute and not even afraid of all the people around.

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Playing in the snow in July! It’s funny, our kids have seen more snow this summer in Colorado than they have seen in their entire lives! As usual, we were not dressed appropriately for playing in the snow. We always start out at a much warmer, lower elevation, and don’t realize just how cold it will be as we get higher. You’d think we would have learned by now.

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We did the Alpine Ridge trail hike that was mostly walking up stairs. It was a somewhat short hike, but it was really hard! It’s amazing how out of breath we got up at 12,000 feet. It made me feel really out of shape when I could hardly catch my breath, but then I read this sign which explains it.

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The sign we’re standing next to is pretty faded, but it says we are at 12,000 feet. That was at the top of the stairs.

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It was 54 degrees up there with 40 mph winds. It was so cold with the wind! But how could we complain when pretty soon we had to head back to our campground where it was 100 degrees?

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The views were so amazing up there, but it was time to head back home to the sweltering heat. The boys also earned their Junior Ranger badges. I think they now have 18 national park badges!

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We stayed at St. Vrain State Park just north of Denver. It was a nice park and we had a great site on the lake with a beautiful view. You can even see the Rocky Mountains off in the distance.

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Unfortunately it was close to 100 degrees most of the time we were there, so that wasn’t fun. It’s not easy to keep an RV cool in that kind of heat. At least the evenings and mornings were cool though. We had some beautiful sunsets and as soon as the sun started to go down the temperature cooled down a lot! Then we could go outside and play.

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One evening a funny thing happened. A family pulled up and parked at our campsite. We were wondering why they were parking at our site. They just wanted to fish at the lake in front of our site, but it’s still a little strange for someone to just park at our campsite. Then later they wanted to use our grill to cook their dinner. We didn’t mind because they were nice. And Chris who is always so hospitable made them some of his “world famous” homemade french fries to go with their dinner. They had some extra fishing poles and let the boys use them since the poles we used to have broke and we haven’t replaced them. I’m not sure if I should mention this because of all the racial hatred going on right now, but just so you know, not everyone in this country is a racist. This family was black or I guess I should say African-American if I’m being politically correct (which I’m usually not). Regardless, we had a great time with them that night and really enjoyed their company. I wish they would have come back again while we were staying there. Their granddaughter was Jake’s age and she was so sweet! She loved Chris’s french fries and would hardly let anyone else have any. 🙂 And she was very patient with me as she tried to teach me how to fish. I wasn’t very good at it.

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The best part about our week at St. Vrain was meeting up with another Fulltime Family there that we met a few weeks earlier at the rally in Montrose. Jake and Jesse love playing with their son Dylan! They played together for hours every day and they are really going to miss each other. But I’m sure our paths will cross again at some point.

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There is so much more to RMNP than we had time to see in just 2 days. Just like most places we’ve been, we want to return again someday and explore some more. There is just so much to see and do in this country and so little time! Are you getting out and exploring the national parks? This year is the National Park Service’s 100th birthday. Perhaps that’s why the parks are so crowded this year? I don’t know, but before we started traveling I had no idea what we were missing. I hope that my posts will inspire some of you to get out there and explore these amazing places.

Categories: Colorado, National Parks | Tags: alpine ridge trail, co, Colorado, ditching suburbia, fulltime families, longmont, rmnp, rocky mountain national park, st. vrain state park, trail ridge road | Leave a comment

Rocky Mountain National Park – Day 1

Posted on July 16, 2016 by Heather Gebbia

We spent 2 days at Rocky Mountain National Park, and since I took way too many pictures as usual I will split this up into 2 posts.

The first day we went to the most popular (and therefore the most crowded) section of the park — Bear Lake. The parking lot at Bear Lake is typically full by 8:30am and since we were driving from our campground about an hour away, we didn’t make it that early. The second option is to park in the Park and Ride lot and ride the shuttle. We parked there and were lucky to get one of the last spots in that parking lot, and thankfully our truck fit in it! Then we had to stand in a super long line to wait for the shuttle bus. These bus lines make Disney bus lines look short!

Anyway, once we finally got to the Bear Lake trailhead, the crowds dispersed somewhat and we enjoyed some beautiful hikes.

We started off hiking to Nymph Lake and Dream Lake.

Nymph Lake

Dream Lake

One nice thing about a more crowded park is there are always people willing to take family pictures for you so the 4 of us could be in more pictures together.

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Next we hiked the loop around Bear Lake which was stunning!

Bear Lake

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Lastly we hiked to Alberta Falls.

These hikes were all amazing and it’s obvious why it seems to be the most popular and crowded section of the park. If you come here and want to do these hikes, plan to arrive at the Park & Ride lot early (I think we got there about 9 or 9:30ish and the lot was just about full). Another option is to go later in the afternoon if there is not a high chance of afternoon thunderstorms. We returned to the parking lot after hiking at about 2:30 and there were plenty of parking spaces then and the bus line was not quite as long.

We spent the night at a hotel in Estes Park so we could visit that cute and charming town and be close to RMNP for another day of hiking the next day.

Estes Park is very crowded and touristy, but there is a really nice river walk behind all the shops and restaurants that is less crowded than walking down the main street. We enjoyed walking along the river walk and having a yummy Mexican dinner at Ed’s Cantina.

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Estes Park

Stay tuned for Day 2.

Categories: Colorado, National Parks | Tags: alberta falls, bear lake, co, Colorado, ditching suburbia, dream lake, estes park, fulltime families, nymph lake, rmnp, rocky mountain national park | 2 Comments

Black Canyon National Park

Posted on June 27, 2016 by Heather Gebbia

Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park is in Montrose, Colorado.

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The Gunnison River winds through the bottom of the canyon.

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This park has many beautiful viewpoints and a few hiking trails. We only spent a few hours there because it was a very hot day, but we managed to see some awesome views and hiked one trail.

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And the boys earned new Junior Ranger badges.

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We enjoyed our visit in spite of the heat, but I think it would be more fun to explore this park when the weather is a little cooler.

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Categories: Colorado, National Parks | Tags: black canyon, black canyon of the gunnison national park, co, Colorado, ditching suburbia, fulltime families, gunnison river, junior ranger, montrose | Leave a comment

Colorado National Monument

Posted on June 5, 2016 by Heather Gebbia

Colorado National Monument is in Fruita and Grand Junction, CO. We hiked there for a few days while we were in the area. It was similar to Utah with all the red rocks, but different because of all the mountains in the background. It’s like the transition from the red rocks of Utah to the mountains of Colorado and that makes for lots of gorgeous scenery!

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On the way up into the hills we saw lots of big horn sheep.

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And we drove through a couple of cool tunnels. I don’t know if we could have driven our house through there!

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There are several beautiful viewpoints and hikes to do in this park. We went there in the evenings a few times after work because we were staying at a campground just 3 miles from the entrance. We also spent a whole weekend day there.

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There is an entrance to this park in Fruita and also in Grand Junction and you can drive the whole scenic Rimrock Drive through from one side to the other. Since the Fruita side was near our campground we drove all the way to the Grand Junction side only on the weekend when we had more time. We did 2 hikes on the Grand Junction side: the Devil’s Kitchen and the Serpent’s Trail. Who comes up with these names? I can tell you that the Devil’s Kitchen was a very cool and refreshing rock room at the end of the hike where you could rest and cool off. Not at all how I would imagine the devil’s kitchen to really feel like!

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Serpent’s Trail was a long hike uphill and then back down with amazing views all around. And since it’s called Serpent’s Trail I expected to see lots of snakes but we only saw one.

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Later in the week we went back again in the evening so the kid’s could get their Junior Ranger badges.

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And we also did the Coke Ovens hike that night because it was too crowded on the weekend.

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On the way to the Coke Ovens we found this cave that was a little bit off the trail. My 3 guys thought it would be fun to go in it, but I thought it was just creepy. We walked in and were surprised at how far back it goes. I opened up my flashlight app on my phone so we could see where we were going. We did see light at the end of the tunnel but it got too narrow to crawl through (at least for adults). All I could think of was what if there is a bear in here, or snakes or who knows what else? Ah, the adventures of living with boys! 🙂

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The rest of the pictures are of some of the scenic viewpoints you can find along Rimrock Drive.

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They have a Balanced Rock just like Arches National Park!

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While we were in Fruita we stayed at James M. Robb Colorado River State Park. Now that’s a mouthful of a name for a state park! We had a really nice site with plenty of space (unlike those crowded RV parks in Moab). 🙂

Fat Cat loved this campground! She would hide in the bushes and try to hunt birds. One evening Chris & I were sitting outside enjoying the sunset and the cat was crouched down like she was ready to attack something. Suddenly a black bird came low enough for her and she leaped into the air and actually touched the bird! The bird flew safely away, but oh how I wish I could have captured that on video! The picture below is Fat Cat resting on the picnic table until…

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… just minutes later she hears a bird on the roof of the patio cover!

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We enjoyed beautiful sunsets every evening.

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We loved this state park, but the weather suddenly turned really hot… I mean like 95+ degrees hot. I didn’t think Colorado got that hot! Anyway, the nice thing about having a house on wheels is that when the weather gets unpleasant we can move on. And move on we did to higher elevations.

Categories: Colorado, National Parks | Tags: Colorado, colorado national monument, Colorado River, ditching suburbia, fruita, fulltime families, grand junction, hiking, james m. robb colorado river state park, junior ranger | 2 Comments

Canyonlands – The Needles

Posted on May 30, 2016 by Heather Gebbia

If you are following along, my last post was about Canyonlands – Island in the Sky. The Needles was about 70 miles south of where we stayed in Moab so we went there on a different day.

Maybe it’s just because we were tired from a lot of hiking and activities in Moab, but we just were not as impressed with this section of Canyonlands. If we had it to do over, we probably would have skipped it. It was a long drive and in our opinion, not really worth it.

This park is pretty far out of the way so maybe they just don’t get a lot of visitors, but they really need more parking spaces. To access the most popular hike in the park (Chesler Park), you need to drive down a narrow dirt road for 3 miles. The big dually truck has no trouble on dirt roads, but it becomes a problem when that road is skinny & narrow and someone else is coming the other direction.

Once we finally made it to the end of the 3 mile dirt road, there was no available parking. It was a very tiny parking lot for the most popular hike in the park. So, we turned around and made our way back out the skinny 3 mile dirt road.

We made the best of it by going on some of the other hikes, but they just really didn’t measure up to all the other places we had seen in Utah. Not to mention, parking was very limited at these other hikes as well.

Anyway, now that I’ve really built this up to be a great park, I’m sure you want to see my pictures, right? 🙂

The first cool thing we saw was on the way into the park. There were several cows just lying on the side of the road.

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And then we got to Newspaper Rock. This is a wall full of petroglyphs.

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Those are the Needles way off in the distance. If you come to this park and are fortunate enough to find parking for the Chesler Park hike, you can hike all the way up to the Needles which would probably be a really cool hike.

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We hiked on the Pothole Point trail which has beautiful views off in the distance and fun rocks to climb on. Lots of potholes in the slickrock too which I suppose is how they came up with the name for the trail.

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We learned about cryptobiotic soil. The black-ish soil in the picture below is alive and made of tiny living things. There are signs in the parks to let you know to stay on the trail and not walk on this soil.

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The Slickrock trail also had some beautiful views.

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I really don’t mean to make it sound like this part of Canyonlands is not worth visiting. It certainly has some amazing views to see, and I’m sure if we had a chance to hike to the Needles it would have been awesome.

I also need to be fair and say that our lack of enthusiasm for this park may have a lot to do with the fact that we were all exhausted from 2 weeks of hiking in Utah. The picture below of Jesse on the way home after the Needles pretty much sums up how we all felt by that point.

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Categories: National Parks, Utah | Tags: canyonlands national park, cryptobiotic soil, moab, newspaper rock, slickrock, the needles, ut, Utah | 3 Comments

Canyonlands – Island in the Sky

Posted on May 29, 2016 by Heather Gebbia

While we were in Moab, Utah we visited Canyonlands National Park. This park is separated into 3 districts: Island in the Sky, the Needles and the Maze. The districts are separated by the Colorado and Green Rivers. The Maze is not accessible by vehicle so we didn’t go there, but we did visit the Island in the Sky and the Needles on 2 different days. The entrance and visitor centers to these 2 districts are not at all close to each other, so it’s not practical to visit them on the same day.

I will add another post about the Needles later, but I will mention that of the 2 districts, we enjoyed Island in the Sky much better!

Our first hike was to Grand View Point. It reminded me a little bit of the Grand Canyon, on a much smaller scale.

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Next we did the Aztec Butte hike. We found out that Butte is pronounced “byoot”, not the way we had been saying it, lol! However, even though we now know the correct pronunciation, my kids still like to call it “butt” because they think that is funnier of course. 🙂

It was a steep climb up slickrock. We met some other hikers along the way that said our kids are like monkeys. I’m not sure what they meant by that. 😉 Maybe it’s because Jesse was way up ahead of us, climbing like a monkey?

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The views from the top were incredible, and it was a great place to stop for a snack break.

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My people thought this cave looked like a good place to take a nap.

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There were some structures from ancient peoples that lived there a few hundred years ago.

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The next hike was on Whale Rock. This one might have been our favorite. It is made up of huge mounds of rock that from a distance could resemble a whale.

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On top of the whale was the perfect place for a picnic lunch.

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Nap time again? I think I tired my people out with all the hiking while we were in Utah!

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After lunch we did the Upheaval Dome hike. That was definitely the hardest hike of the day. Maybe it was because we could have stopped at the first overlook, but I insisted we keep going to the second overlook which involved a lot more up and down hill hiking. By the end of this hike we were all exhausted.

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