Newspaper Rock, Canyonlands, Colorado River

Canyonlands National Park southeast entrance and Indian Creek Recreation Area

We circled back to Moab and Canyonlands National Park, this time entering the park from the southeastern edge through the BLM Indian Creek Recreation Area and Newspaper Rock State Park / Historical Monument.

The Indian Creek Recreation Area provided a great variety of Ancestral Puebloan / Anasazi petroglyphs and ruins. The famous Newspaper Rock was easily accessed from the road, and displayed a fantastic display of interesting and varied Anasazi etchings in the stone. Our best find of the day was only spotted in the distance while driving, with no signs or regular trail system to it. Along the base of slowly collapsing cliffs we found a granary plus many examples of petroglyphs and painted hand prints.

In Canyonlands National Park, the scenery opened up before us with towering buttes, spires, and toadstool rock formations, all surrounded by snow-capped mountains in the distance. The strata, colors, erosion, and cracks of time revealed many geological stories.

To the west of Moab, a rough narrow snow and rubble-covered 4X4 road (Potash Road to South Fork Road) took us out beyond a large potash mine complex and into dark burgundy rock formations unlike any others on the trip. The formations were deeply scarred vertically with erosion and scarred laterally with the differences of layer upon layer created over eons. After the sun set we ended at an overlook deep into the gorge formed by the ice-choked Colorado River, and returned via South Fork Road and Potash Road back to the lights of Moab in the far distance.