Wow! Everything about this stop in Moab has been perfect. We are staying at the Hoo Doo Resort, a Curio Collection Hilton Hotel. It is amazing….the decor, the room and especially the people.
We arranged our tour of the parks through the hotel and the concierge suggested 3 Alarm Tours and we are so glad they did. Jason owns the operation and he was our guide. He’s a retired fireman and EMT who, in his words, “decided to see people on their best day, not their worst.” Super friendly. Super accommodating. Super informative. His Jeep is totally equipped for off-roading which we politely declined. These old bones and Cliff’s tempermental back made that decision easy. We did take one bouncy road to get a better view of “the” arch — the one that is on Nevada license plates. We saw plenty of things that were even better from the comfort of paved roads and look-outs!
The second national park in the area is Canyonlands. It is VAST. Impossible to visit it all in the half-day we had remaining so we concentrated on the area called Island in the Sky. Different from the Grand Canyon. Both sides of individual canyons are visible and we were told these areas are where native tribes corraled wild horses.
We took a side trip outside the parks to see some incredibly well-preserved petroglyphs. The native tribes created drawings on the sides of cliffs by scratching through a dark layer of desert varnish which is formed by windblown clay, bacteria and trace minerals over thousands of years. The height of the drawings gives an indication of where the ground level was when these drawings were made. If you look closely at the photos below, you’ll spot depictions of humans, an owl, a centepede, horses and many other figures. Some of their models look pretty robust!
I’ll round out this post with a photo of me after breakfast at the hotel’s restaurant. The natives were very, very friendly.
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