This post is part of an ongoing series summarizing each State Park in Missouri that our family has attended. We hope to visit each of 54 State Parks before the kids graduate from high school.
The last state park we visited this past summer was Montauk State Park, the next morning after we visited Grand Gulf State Park. By this point in the trip, we’d had a whirlwind tour of a bunch of parks, some more interesting than others, so by the time we were at Montauk, we were all about ready to go home. We at least knew Montauk wasn’t going to feature a long hike or anything, so that powered us through the morning.
The biggest thing about Montauk State Park is that it is located near the beginning of the Current River, where the spring feeds cold water into the river system and provides a perfect site to raise trout. It also means that a bunch families were there fishing.
Montauk State Park is one of three “trout parks” in Missouri, primarily featuring daily stocking of rainbow and brown trout. The different reservoirs being maintained at the site have fish at different stages of development. Reservoirs need to be emptied and cleaned (like the one above) occasionally, but it sure looked like millions of fish growing across the different tanks.
There was a little bit of hiking, but very limited. Really, it was a flat, gravel bike trail that went around the bodies of water in the area. We did a 1 mile loop around the pond, and that was basically the only “hiking” available at the site. Again, fishing is the primary draw, so not a ton for us to do, unfortunately!
If fishing was of interest to us, it would be a cool place to be! They’ve also got cabins on site, so it’s relatively easy to stay close to the fishing, making it convenient to get up early, if that’s your thing. For what we tend to be interested in, though, Montauk probably isn’t a park we need to return to any time soon. It was an easy stop to cap off the trip, though, so glad we saw it!
This post is part of an ongoing series summarizing each State Park in Missouri that our family has attended. We hope to visit each of 54 State Parks before the kids graduate from high school.
After we spent the morning at Lake Wappapello State Park, we took a journey to one of the more remote options in the system: nearly in the middle of the state, a few miles from the border with Arkansas, lies Grand Gulf State Park. Again, if the goal was to hit the parks that we otherwise are highly unlikely to randomly cross, we had to make sure we hit this one! It was a two hour drive from Lake Wappapello, so that allowed a bit of rest time in the car before seeing what Grand Gulf had to offer.
The park itself features a cave system that collapsed thousands of years ago, leaving behind Missouri’s “Little Grand Canyon.” Before checking out the landmark itself, we took the 0.75 mile Natural Bridge Trail, which was among the easier ones we’d been on over this trip. There were some ups and downs, but it was generally suited to a wide audience of visitors. We always appreciate loop trails like this, too, so we don’t have any backtracking and are otherwise seeing a new landscape the entire time.
After the hike, we descended as far as we could down the hill toward the opening to the canyon. The history of the area was rather interested, though it is disappointing no one can go into the cave system. In the late-19th and early-20th century, there are records of folks attempting to explore the cave system, but a series of collapses over the millennia have made it mostly impossible. Aspects of the system were accessible into the 1920s, but a series of storms and floods washed trees and other debris down into the caves, shutting off sections. Even today, rains that get heavy enough can collect water in the canyon as high as 100 ft, taking weeks to drain.
While we were there, there was water down in the depths, but nowhere near that high. The “100 ft line” is essentially where the bottom of the deck hits here, so it’s crazy to think of what it looks like with that much rain!
I should note that this cave system has been traced another 9 miles away, emerging in Arkansas at Mammoth Spring. Apparently, that’s a state park, too, but for now, we aren’t planning on adding parks from other states to our list!
All in all, it was an interesting, albeit brief, visit. I think we’re glad we knocked this one out while we were down in southern Missouri, since making a special trip down there to hit this park may have been more disappointing. The trail just isn’t that long, and you can’t go deep enough to see much of the cave like you can at Rock Bridge State Park, so while it’s a beautiful view and an awesome sight to see, in a state where you don’t normally see formations like it, there just isn’t much to do there after you’ve seen the sight. Glad we went, but probably won’t return any time soon!
This post is part of an ongoing series summarizing each State Park in Missouri that our family has attended. We hope to visit each of 54 State Parks before the kids graduate from high school.
Having not traveled far with the kids this summer, we opted to throw in a classic man-made Missouri lake beach excursion onto the trip. Lake Wappapello State Park is about 20 minutes outside of Poplar Bluff, MO and features camping, fishing, boating, hiking, and a beach area. It isn’t all that dissimilar from Long Branch State Park near Macon, MO, which we’ve visited a few times just before school starts. Lake Wappapello feels a bit bigger, though, and aspects of the park seem a bit more spread out.
Lake Wappapello, like many (all?) of the lakes in the Missouri State Park System, resulted from a river that was dammed for either electricity generation or recreational purposes. Given the fertile Mississippi River basin farmland down here, you can imagine that there were communities that were not all that pleased with the prospect of the lake going in, but ultimately the lake went in and it has been here ever since.
Still, weirdly, there weren’t many people there! We went to the beach, first, and saw another couple eating breakfast at a nearby picnic table. We drove around to the marina to see about renting canoes for an hour or so. They ended up being $50 a day to rent, and we didn’t want them for that long, so we skipped them this time. Still, they have 3 canoes to rent and one of them was spoken for. There was a pontoon being put in, but otherwise only two other trucks/trailers in the parking lot putting in. This was at 9:15 on a Saturday morning in early-August: prime time to get in a camping trip, some boating, some fishing, etc. before school starts and before the Fall hits. It was just surprising to feel like we had the park all to ourselves!
The beach itself felt a bit smaller than Long Branch’s. Not necessarily in a bad way, but it probably can’t handle a crowd like Long Branch or even Thousand Hills (I never really visited that beach, so could be wrong there…). The depth of the water was very reasonable for kids, where 75% of the swimming space was 4′ or less in depth. I went out about as far as I could and the water only got up to my chin, so we’re talking maybe a little more than 5′ of depth at the most?
Behind the beach, there were multiple picnic tables, a pit toilet (with decent space for changing clothes), a water fountain and a spigot for washing off sand from feet, and a small playground. The parking lot was bigger than could probably support the beach, honestly, so I’d be very curious to see what it’s like on a “busy day.”
We didn’t drive through the camping area, but there were campers around. Compared with the other parks we’ve visited on this trip, it sure seems like it should be a pretty popular location for this region, and has some fun opportunities to check out: it was just surprising that there weren’t more people there!
This post is part of an ongoing series summarizing each State Park in Missouri that our family has attended. We hope to visit each of 54 State Parks before the kids graduate from high school.
Like I said in the previous post, we were knocking off a bunch of state parks this year since we couldn’t really travel far for a traditional family vacation. There were multiple parks within driving distance of Poplar Bluff, so we centered our focus around there. One of the options was Morris State Park, which, again, a). doesn’t include camping, and b). appears to not be a heavily attended park.
To be fair, we didn’t check attendance measures until later (apparently got something like 8,500 visitors in 2024, whereas Van Meter State Park got 47,500…), but it became evident as we started on the 2.7 mile trail (I say “the” because it was the only one). There was a sign when we first got going that mentioned poison ivy being a thing, but we took that as, “well, it’s Missouri, so of course it’s a thing??” We quickly found, though, that there was poison ivy growing on the trail itself, which wasn’t ideal.
What was growing on the trail wasn’t too bad, but small little plants growing up will eventually create problems for visitors. There were larger plants off to the sides that we took care to avoid, but there were three or four large branches/trees down, crossing the trail, that forced us to move off-trail a few times, complicating our journey and increasing the chances we’d hit the poison ivy.
Still, the trail itself was pretty good, or at least, if a). we were there in October, and b). if the parks service would come by to remove the downed branches, it would be a pleasant hike with some limited elevation changes and decent views. The park is settled near a peach grove, so it was pretty obvious we were hiking right next to a semi-open field with some trees in it. We also heard tractors off in distance, so it was an oasis of woodland clearly located within farmland.
Honestly, we weren’t all that impressed. The state park website plays up the fact that, geologically, Crowley’s Ridge (upon which some of the hiking takes place) is a raised portion of the ground that used to be lining the ancient Gulf of Mexico, then millennia of ice age meltwater continued to shape the area into what it is now. Impressive, I suppose, but ultimately, it’s kinda just a hill with some trees on it (sorry, geologists….).
So yeah, if you’re in the area and want to give it a look, I’m not going to say skip it….but none of us were particularly impressed, especially given the lack of maintenance on the trail!
This post is part of an ongoing series summarizing each State Park in Missouri that our family has attended. We hope to visit each of 54 State Parks before the kids graduate from high school.
Brooke and I went to Alaska earlier this summer (I know, I know, I haven’t posted the details yet….getting there….), and given the kids’ other time constraints and camps, we didn’t really have the opportunity to travel far or for very long with them this year. Soooooo, we opted to knock some state parks off the list kinda like we did in 2020! Brooke took off Monday so we could get a jump on the trip, so we headed toward the bootheel to hit parks we otherwise are highly unlikely to cross in our usual travels.
First up on the list was Big Oak Tree State Park. A theme you’ll notice over the next few posts is that these are a). not heavily attended, and b). don’t include campgrounds (hence their lack of attendance). If anything, it made for a somewhat relaxing visit where we could take our time and explore a bit! On the other hand, it also meant that there weren’t a ton of things to see.
The “claim to fame” for Big Oak Tree State Park is really the history of it. Meg has been reading from a State Park coffee table book we got from our donation to KBIA a few years ago (support your local public radio stations, folks…), so we get a bit of the history as we’re heading into each site. This one was interesting in that it’s one of the older pieces of land set aside for state parks, largely because we had the collective wisdom to deforest a lot of the region in favor of farm land along the Mississippi River in the early 20th century. This ended up affecting the ecosystem to a substantial degree, but thankfully they saw fit to save at least some acreage of the old growth trees so we now have a sense of what the swampy forest would have looked like had it been left along 100 years ago. While more land was ultimately purchased around the trees, only about 80 acres of the original forest land remain, containing trees averaging 120+ feet tall. It’s currently designated as a National Natural Landmark!
There are (were?) several state and national record-holder trees on the site, though few remain now, unfortunately. There were at least four there for awhile, but severe weather events and old age have taken down some of them over the years. They’ve got signs along the boardwalk trail indicating where the trees once stood, and in some cases, even if the tree fell, they left it for visitors to see.
One of the really interesting things we saw was the bald cypress trees. I guess we must not have many up near where we live, but apparently the root systems of cypress trees include these little “spires” that grow up from the ground?? They look like stalagmites in a cave. The effect in a natural swamp like this is that they end up holding the soil together so it doesn’t wash away as quickly. Fascinating!
Another weird quirk of the site is that the original plans were to included a man-made lake in the center of the space, so they built levees, added pumping systems, and tried stocking it only to find they were fighting constant battles with the Mississippi River floodplain. Costs were too high, so they abandoned that project. Still, they found that water collected in sloughs outside the levees and those actually did alright with keeping more native fish, and the levee itself served as a decent hiking trail around the area.
We hiked about 1.5 miles along the boardwalk trail, and it was a pretty flat and easy trip. The main issue we ran into was that there were cobwebs at points, especially later on, that got kinda annoying. Again, it was clear that the trail wasn’t visited all that often, yielding the opportunity for stuff to keep growing and not get knocked down.
All in all, it was a good “first stop” on the trip. Pretty light and easy, an interesting story behind the park, and the weather was shockingly good for early August (highs around 80 F?? Can’t beat that!).
I meant to post something about this awhile back, but our “new reality” of Meg being in high school has meant that our evening time is at a substantial premium in recent weeks. Basically, Meg decided to start playing golf so that she would have something athletic to put down on her college applications when the time comes. Golf also made sense because it’s a relatively short season, giving her more time to focus on music practice, among other things. Golf is also a “lifetime sport:” something she can continually learn about while also playing for the rest of her life.
Well, golf season started a few weeks before school started, right around the time marching band started (more on that in another post). So for the first few months of school, Meg had to be at school for marching band at 7:30, then she needed to get to the golf course after school for practice from 3:30 – 5:30 (depending on the day). Then, in early September, she started practicing for the musical from 6:00 to 8:00 (and the musical is this week, so that’s been going on for a loooooong time…).
Regardless, we didn’t really know what to expect with golf! We picked up a second-hand set of clubs from Play it Again Sports, but quickly found that they probably weren’t adequate. Meg was also missing a few key clubs, so we ended up borrowing a set from the clubhouse that had been sitting there, unclaimed. We also used a push cart that the school had, and eventually, she had a school-issued golf bag with the Marshall Owls logo on it (at one time, we had four golf bags in our garage….ug…).
At practice, her coach was always insistent that Meg was improving! Her scores didn’t really reflect it, but we could tell that she was getting closer and closer to the green each time. Apparently, at least in girl’s high school golf, they get 8 shots to get the ball to the green. After 8 shots, they can pick up the ball and take that score, rather than continuing further. More often than not, she hit the max score, not reaching the green, but by the end of the season, she was more consistently getting there, even getting to putt!
Meg’s coach says that her putting and her chipping are both pretty good! It’s clear that her driving isn’t getting very far, so that’s where we need to put in some work before next season.
Initially, we didn’t think Meg would travel much with the team, given the fact that she was brand new to the sport, but there were quite a few times where other teams would come to Marshall to play 9 holes, so Meg got to play some rounds in a relatively non-competitive context. There was one home tournament, playing 18 holes. Otherwise, she traveled to Boonville and Hannibal, so she got some longer games under her belt for her first season.
Ultimately, the thing we appreciated most about the experience is how supportive the other girls were of Meg! She was clearly not doing well compared to them, but she was there, maintained a positive attitude, and she seemed to be having a good time! It’s also a different group of girls than she’s used to interacting with. These weren’t “band kids,” though one of the other girls is in the musical, so there were some connections to Meg’s other interests.
We’re already making plans for next summer. The public course here in town has family rates, so we’ll probably pick up another set of clubs that Brooke and I can “make do” with (because neither of us know anything, either!!) so that we can go out with her a few times a week. We’ll probably schedule it where Meg and I go out to play 9 holes a few days a week, and maybe she and Brooke will go to the driving range in the early evening or on the weekends as she has more time.
It’s a brave new world for us, though! It’s kind of exciting to participate in something completely new, something where none of us have any clue what we’re doing. We look forward to seeing how far she goes in the next few years, and maybe Brooke and I will learn something in the process!
For our last day in Utah, we visited the famed Four Corners site, where Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado all meet. Brooke had been there before, so she kinda knew what to expect. It was a nice facility, with different vendors in booths a la a farmer’s market selling things ranging from shirts and magnets to hand-made jewelry, knives, and arrows.
There wasn’t much of a line, thankfully, so we got our obligatory pictures, did a little shopping, and then got a snack before heading out.
We knew we wanted to do something else that Thursday afternoon, and my vote was more hiking (since we really hadn’t done much….). The downside is that it was 108 F outside (the car said 113 F….eeeeeesh….), so we wanted to limit the mileage a bit.
We searched around for trails and came across one that was about a mile out toward a cave. We had to go off-roading a bit to get to this site, so that provided a little adventure, but at least it wasn’t the hours of “off the beaten path” we did a few days prior.
You can see the cave off in the distance, and we thought, “hey, that doesn’t look too far!” Turns out it would be harder than we thought!
We parked near the main road, unsure of what our options would be further down, so we left the car and walked down a road until it hit the trail. It started out fine, but it was pretty sandy and there wasn’t much shade, unfortunately. There were bits, but there were long stretches of none, which was pretty draining.
We did see some outcroppings with what looked as if they used to be dwellings, but they weren’t preserved, so there wasn’t a lot to see. Given the heat, and the fact there weren’t really trails heading toward spots like this, we mostly looked and then kept going.
By the time we got to our destination, we saw a relatively steep slick rock face heading up to the cave entrance, and given our potential for heat exhaustion, Brooke and Meg hung back to have some water in a shady spot while I proceeded to get a better look. This image is with the telephoto, so I didn’t get nearly this close, but it was enough to see that it looked pretty cool! There was a lot of vegetation between the slick rock and the cave, though….and it was very hot….so I took a few pictures and went back down. Calvin came part of the way up the hill with me, but by then, we were getting a bit concerned about his condition.
Brooke and Meg walked back and I hung out with Calvin in the shade a bit. He looked like he was overheating, so he cooled off a bit, drank some water, and when he was ready, we kept going. He was taking it a bit slower, but I don’t think it was anything really serious. It was hot and he’s small: simple as that.
That night, we had dinner and stayed up late to watch the sunset outside of town. We were hoping to see the Milky Way, but we probably would have had to wait a lot longer and none of us were really in the mood to stay up. It was nice to experience the stars away from pesky lights in town, though, and it was cool to be in the middle of literally nowhere!
After that, it was time to head home on Friday! We went through southern Colorado this time, so it was a different route through the Rockies. We stopped for lunch up in the mountains (Brooke made sandwiches) next to a river, which is always a lovely experience. We stopped in Garden City, KS for dinner that night at a nice Mexican restaurant, and then drove another hour-ish to Dodge City, KS for the night. Similar to our trip out west in the first place, we put in a lot of hours on that Friday so that we would get home at a reasonable time on Saturday afternoon.
In the end, we drove 3151 miles on this trip, which was a little over half what we did when we drove the Pacific Coast Highway.
We’re in an interesting “spot,” so far as our next vacation goes. Brooke and I have our 20th wedding anniversary next year, so we’ll do a trip by ourselves, but we will still need to do something with the kids (….I mean…I guess we need to??), so it may be “expensive trip” for the two of us and “shorter/cheaper trip” for the four of us. We’ll see!
We had reservations for Mesa Verde National Park on Tuesday of our vacation, so this was kinda the one day we really had “locked in” so far as flexibility with everything else went. Brooke had been there before, but it had been many years. She knew generally what to expect, and she’d been on the main tour, Cliff Palace, previously. She really wanted to go to Square Tower house, as that was the most “exclusive,” difficult to attend, tour. The only way to do it was to secure reservations up to 2 weeks in advance, with 10 slots opening at 9:00 am CDT. Two weeks ahead, I sit at my computer, refresh the page at exactly 9:00 am, and within, no joke, 20 seconds, all 10 reservations were taken. Ug. The next day, I tried again, but this time, I actually got to the CAPTCHA verification. It put me through three rounds of verification (motorcycle, bus, crosswalk….)….and then it still didn’t give me any tickets…. Ug ug.
After that, we gave up and went with Balcony House, which wasn’t the main tour everyone does, but it wasn’t the most exclusive one, either. Alas, it would be fine.
Regardless, we made the drive from Blanding to Mesa Verde (an hour and a half-ish), taking a somewhat scenic route through reservation lands, before hitting their impressive-looking visitor center. We didn’t stay long, as we wanted lunch and we were going to do a driving tour of the area.
I should also note that the drive from the visitor center to where the towers are was kinda long? We had to drive up to the top of Mesa Verde, which wasn’t a trivial drive, taking another 30-45 minutes to complete. It was really pretty, though, and surprisingly lush up there (hence where the “verde” name comes in).
One of the neat things about the site is that there are kivas all over the place, but along the driving tour, they were laid out chronologically, so we got to see an older version of one, then a newer one, then a much more ornate one, giving us a sense of how they evolved over generations. The National Park Service also has them covered to protect them from the elements, while also providing shade for tourists like us.
Here’s the view of Cliff Palace from across the canyon, complete with a tour group checking things out. They are truly remarkable structures to see up close, let alone in the distance. One wonders how the residents of these structures got down and up all the time, as the would be farming on the top of the mesa, then returning down to the dwellings in the rock face.
The Balcony House tour took off from a parking lot above the dwelling and, while it wasn’t a strenuous trip down, it wasn’t necessarily simple, either. It took about 10 minutes to get down there, down a paved path, first, then down some metal stairs to a walkway that went alongside the mesa.
The tour guide said he has had people “freak out” due to heights while being down there, so he told everyone that it’s probably not a good idea to go if you think you’re going to run into issues. He said someone had to be airlifted out because they couldn’t be carried from the site below.
Now, I’m not a huge fan of heights, personally, but I thought this was fine. It was far from the edge and there were plenty of railings. Not a big deal. However, there was a spot later on where, if I were much bigger than I am, I would have struggled to get through.
We climbed a ladder to get up to the cliff dwelling, two-by-two, which again is something some folks have problems with. Not a big deal for any of us, though. Kinda neat to get to a tourist site, though!
Once we were up there (also, after kids and adults asked way too many questions, like, right before climbing the ladder! Seriously, hold up with the questions until we’re up there!), the tour guide started pointing out the various structures and some key aspects of the architecture. For example, wooden beams made differently than one another, suggesting that one structure was built first, and then they made changes before the next one. Another kid noticed that each room was labeled a bit differently. The tour guide noted that archaeologists label sites they have investigated in different ways, so it was probably one person “numbering” rooms, and another person came through and “lettered” them, instead. There were multiple architectural anecdotes like that as we continued on.
And at the end, we still see another enormous kiva, deep into the rock. How they dug into the rock face this far is unclear, though it was probably chipping away at rocks for years. This kiva was relatively deep, and it would have had a thatched roof for people to walk across on top. Couldn’t really beat the view from up there, either!
The return trip to leave went through a small tunnel. The tunnel was 18 in wide by 27 in tall, so yeah: small. And it was about 12 ft long. I had my backpack on, so it would have been easier on me if I didn’t… The kids and Brooke didn’t have any issues, but I suspect folks like my father-in-law wouldn’t be all that comfortable trying to climb through.
After that, we headed back to Blanding! Mesa Verde was pretty cool! In some ways, it was kind of like Shenandoah National Park, which we visited last year, where a lot of the trip was driving to and from the park, and driving within the park. Unlike Shenandoah, though, we got to take much longer breaks to see things like Balcony House, or the other kivas along the driving tour.
The following day was spent in Blanding, doing nothing! We had spent a lot of time driving and sightseeing, so we built in a day midweek where nothing was really planned. We watched some “Psych,” we played some cards, we read books – it was a good time to get some relaxing in before our last day before heading home!
The next day, we headed toward Canyonlands National Park, which is just south of Moab, UT. On the way in, we stopped at Newspaper Rock, which is a petroglyph site with drawings dating back at least 1500 years. Like many other petroglyphs and dwellings in the region, these were drawn under a rock face, which has protected the drawings for that period of time.
Other than the petroglyphs, there wasn’t much else to see, so it was a quick stop on our way into Canyonlands!
I should note, since I didn’t earlier, but Calvin happened to be done with 4th grade during this trip. The National Park Service offers the Every Kid Outdoors pass, which allows kids during their 4th grade year (and the summer after!) access to national park lands….for free! …and their families! So yeah, we got to go to Natural Bridges, Canyonlands, and Mesa Verde without having to pay an access fee. We saved at least $150 by taking advantage of it, so thanks for being the right age for this trip, Calvin!
We stopped at the visitor center first, which I’ve been to a number of times going to Utah for our Field Biology course the past few years. I am used to going on longer hikes in this particular park, but the kids weren’t really excited about it, so we opted for shorter trips. One of them was a 1 mile hike that featured flat rock hiking, a few ladders to climb, and some old timey cowboy encampments that illustrated how ranchers used to use the overhanging rocks for shelter.
It was neat to see just how far some of the overhangs went back, like the picture above. It was tall enough that putting horses in there wouldn’t have been an issue, so it’s no wonder ranchers used spaces like these for years. Above, Calvin is standing in front of a spring, where water slowly leached through from the surface above when it rained, again showing the utility of these spaces.
A lot of the hiking in this region is called “flat rock,” which is just as it sounds: walking over flat surfaces rather than on gravel or sand. Due to the Field Biology class I’ve helped out with, I’ve hit a bunch of areas like this, but in Canyonlands, flat rock hiking like this is pretty common. You end up having to find cairns, which are small piles of rocks that indicate the direction of the trail. Since there’s no soil, there’s no way to place a sign telling hikers where to go, so cairns are the norm.
The section of Canyonlands we were in was called the Needles District. There is a really good loop trail that takes you right up to the “needles,” or the rock formations behind us in this picture. That trail is over 10 miles long, though, so we didn’t push it. Next time, hopefully!
Like I said, I’ve gone to this area a few times with our Field Biology course and usually we stay on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands. We camp, of course, but you can pitch a tent for free on publicly managed spaces, like those near Canyonlands.
I got the bright idea to go find one of our campsites with the family after we were done at the national park so they could see where I’ve been sleeping, out in the middle of nowhere. However, as evidenced by the picture above, there had been enough rain recently that the road was covered by water. Could the Outback have made it through the puddle? Probably. Did we really want to risk that? Uh, no. So we didn’t. Next time!
We hit Canyonlands that morning, so the plan was to visit Moab, UT for the afternoon. We took in a late lunch at Moab Brewery and picked up some beer to take back with us, including a growler. We didn’t eat until 1:30 pm that day, so given the anticipation, we were all pretty happy with it.
We walked around Moab looking for souvenirs afterwards and mostly struck out. A lot of the shirts, for example, were representing Moab itself or Arches National Park (which is practically in Moab…), which we weren’t visiting, so nothing really jumped out at us.
There were a lot of folks in Moab, though, but we noted that a lot of them seemed like fellow travelers, or otherwise people who were “living the life of the southwest.” Brooke had been to Moab before, but she made it sound like the “Moab” of her childhood is long gone, instead replaced with a much more commercialized town made up of tourists moreso than folks who actually live there.
After we were done in Moab, we headed back to Blanding for the night! Onward to Mesa Verde the next day!
I’ve been down in southeast Utah a few times in the past two years, and Brooke was down here for family vacations and for her 8th grade “LEAP” experience to Crow Canyon Archaeological Center. My family never ventured this far for vacations, so Brooke has a bit more of a “connection” to the region. Thus, it’s always been on the list for our own family to someday visit.
There are multiple reasons to visit this area. For one, the desert environment is pretty foreign compared to what we’re used to in Missouri. Secondly, depending on when you go, the “dry heat” effect means that 90 F is still remarkably pleasant compared to the same temperature in Missouri. This time of year, the evenings are in the high-50s/low-60s, so it cools off right as the sun goes down. Not bad!
The are also a lot of outdoor adventuring activities to consider, especially around Moab, UT, where you can rent off-road vehicles and you’ll see countless trailers and camper vans to be jealous of.
And finally, there’s the Ancestral Pueblo culture. One could argue that this is the big reason to come here, as there are only a few places in the world where sites like these are preserved for people to see.
In short, for thousands of years, Ancestral Puebloans settled in this region, likely beginning around the 12th century BCE. They inhabited the area and, again due to the climate, many artifacts have survived from that time frame all the way up through around 1300 CE, when most of the sites we visited were ultimately abandoned.
A big misconception that’s been rectified in the last few decades is that the people of this region did not “disappear” for some strange reason: instead, they simply migrated elsewhere as anyone else would. Many of them settled in areas around the Rio Grande river basin, where agriculture was a bit easier. Still, the archaeologists who study this culture have been able to trace the development of advanced pottery and architectural techniques, making for a fascinating area to explore.
That….all….being…..said…. We first stopped at Edge of the Cedars State Park, which happened to be in Blanding! They’ve got world-class research facilities and artifacts, including the room pictured above. They’ve got pottery dating back over a thousand years, and with the computer in the bottom-left, you can select an artifact and learn more about where it was discovered and what was painted on the pots, if anything. It was a pretty neat display!
Out behind the museum, they also have a ruin that can be entered. We saw many such ruins, called kivas, as we visited various sites in the region. These were the “village centers” of small communities, where the structure would be dug into the ground, then bricks stacked in a circle around, and then finally a roof thatched with timbers and clay that was strong enough to walk on. In the center of the structure, a fire could be set up, and a ladder would descend from a hole in the top that allowed smoke to come out from the fire. They Ancestral Puebloans believed that passing through the smoke was a spiritual experience.
There was also more modern art along a short trail behind the museum, including this piece that acted as a sundial. You can see the shapes cut into the piece, including antelope and dancers, and the sun would then pass through those shapes, projecting to the inside. On the summer and winter solstices, those images combine to form a line on the inside, which is probably pretty cool, though we aren’t planning on driving back in late June to find out!
After we were done at Edge of the Cedars, we headed toward “House on Fire,” which is in Mule Canyon, but on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land. Before we went in, we visited another ancient kiva that was preserved until a permanent shelter. Here, you can get a better sense of what a lot of these look like. Typically, they are in a circular shape like this one, however the bottom of this one has more sand in it, rather than a fire pit. You can see what looks like a tombstone on the right-hand side of the floor, and that was a “reflector,” of sorts, so the fire in the center of the kiva wouldn’t be blown out by the air vent coming in from the right side (the hole in the bottom on the direct other side of the “tombstone;” that hole went to another hole further from the kiva, coming out of the ground).
We then took the trail toward House on Fire. As this is BLM land, trails aren’t as well marked as we’d like, so we weren’t entirely sure we were going the right way for awhile! No one else was with us, though we’d eventually run into some others as we got closer to the site. The trail was up in the grass, but also down in this “wash” picture above. We moved back and forth between the two routes. I was wearing my Chacos, so I wasn’t as well-prepared as others (I didn’t know we were going to be in a sandy ditch….sue me….), but it worked out alright. The hike was less than a mile out before we reached our destination.
“House on Fire” gets its name because, well, there’s a house built under the rock face, but also because depending on the time of day and how the sun is hitting, the erosion in the rock face looks like it’s…..”on fire.” We unfortunately didn’t get to see anything so spectacular, but it was still pretty cool! There was another couple there who had been there since 9:30 and they hadn’t seen anything, either. We were told 10:00-11:00 was probably the best time of day to be there, and we arrived closer to 11:30, but again, apparently we didn’t miss much. For our first “up close” cliff dwelling, it was pretty neat!
The walk back, again, featured the same trip we’d already taken, but I wanted to point out the varied terrain. Unlike what we see in Missouri, where a trail is a trail is a trail, in Utah, you can be in a sandy “wash” like we had above, or through a more grassy soil, or on flat rock like above. We’d hit other trails later on in the vacation more like this, but I think it was interesting for the kids to experience such a difference!
Calvin, at least, found it interesting. Meg mostly grumbled.
Our last stop of the day was Natural Bridges National Monument. Arches National Park is near Moab, UT, which makes it a very popular tourist destination. We’d already decided that we didn’t want to deal with that, so instead, we figured that the kids need to see some arches, but maybe bridges would be close enough!
The difference is that an “arch” is formed by any number of things, like erosion from seeping moisture, whereas a “bridge” is formed by erosive action of moving water. For example, water hitting a rock face and being diverted around it: over time, that water would eventually punch through the rock, creating a direct route underneath, whereas the original, diverted water would now exclusively flow in the new channel, leaving the old one dry.
There are three main bridges in the area, all of which can be seen and hiked to. Sipapu Bridge and Kachina Bridge involve relatively strenuous hikes down, so the kids weren’t all that enthusiastic about trying that (they also weren’t crazy about an 8.6 mi hike to see all three of them…).
Luckily, Owachomo Bridge was pretty easy to get to, and it’s the largest one, so that’s what we did! I mostly wanted to include this picture because it’s a good one, but….
This shot provides better scale to see just how big it is. Meg is standing in the middle of it, at the bottom. Pretty cool!
After we left Natural Bridges National Monument, the real adventure began. Brooke wanted to try an “off road” trip that wasn’t necessarily difficult, but still took up off the beaten path a bit. Leaving Natural Bridges, we noticed a dirt road that went around Bears Ears National Monument, which is one of the newest in the system. The sign said “15 miles,” though we admittedly can’t remember specifically to where it was indicating, and given where we ended up going, it may have simply meant “to the end of the road you’re getting on right now.”
This trip took us nearly 2 hours to do what we thought was 15 miles. Brooke was driving (thankfully), and we were going pretty slowly. Some stretches were fine, with some slow ups and downs, but others took us at a 4 degree angle up a one-lane cliff where I didn’t want to look over Brooke’s shoulder to the canyon below. We kept watching the mountain on our right wondering where the pass was going to cut through, and it continued to not do so.
I’m still working on my best estimate as to how far we actually went, but 45 miles is what I’ve got as of writing this (I may edit it as I plug through Google Maps to figure out which road(s) we were actually on). I know we were on Burch Canyon Road for most of the scary stuff, and then we got off onto Wooden Shoe Road for awhile before passing right by Bears Ears East. The GPS tag on the pictures I took confirm we made it at least that far. We also know we ended up on CO-95 when we finally hit pavement again, but specifically where is what I’m a bit fuzzy on. Still, it took quite a bit longer than planned and, after all that, it was time to head home so we could decompress a bit.
It’s good to have an adventure like that sometimes! Next time, maybe we’ll do it at a lower elevation!
The next day brought new challenges, though, when we hit Canyonlands National Park!
