We got a fairly early start, filled up our fresh water tank, since Dead Horse Point State Park only has electric, no water or sewer. We topped off the gas tank, and were ready to go. The State Park was only about 45 minutes away from our Moab RV park, about 15 minutes before Canyonlands National Park. We had reserved two campsites--one for us, and one for Shanti and family. However, just Shanti was coming due to Homecoming weekend for the girls.
We looked over both sites, and pulled into the one on the outer rim, overlooking the mountains. Very nice, completely level. However, Evie said "oh, this other one across the street that we reserved is bigger, and maybe that would work better for us all to just hang out together." Peter said "but this one is exactly level", but Evie said lets try the other one. So we did, try, that is. It turns out that it was so out of level that we used almost all of our leveling blocks, and it still wasn't good enough.
Buy this time, Shanti had arrived (yeh!) and set up in the 1st campsite, unloading all of his kitchen stuff into the very nice picnic area. We then decided that perhaps we SHOULD go back to the level slot, but now the RV and Shanti's van would not both fit in the paved drive. So, wonderful Shanti moved his van over to the unlevel area, and it turned out to be fine for his van. We kept his kitchen at our spot. And all worked out very well.
We had lunch, coffee, and sat around in the covered picnic area, in the shade, as the sun was too hot to be hiking yet. By mid-afternoon, we figured it was cool enough to explore a bit. First we visited the Visitor Center, which has an amazing overlook. We also discovered that there would be a ranger led stargazing talk later that evening.
Next we drove down to Dead Horse Point overview. This is one of the most photographed panoramas in Utah. It overlooks 2000 feet down into the chasm made by the meandering Colorado River and provides a breathtaking panorama of Canyonlands' sculpted pinnacles and buttes. And the colors are spectacular. It has hiking trails that go along both the east and west rims of the mesa, so we walked for just a bit along the west rim. Very impressive.
Time to go back to the campsite and have the Sloppy Joes dinner I made yesterday, and then on to the stargazing talk. The ranger had set up two huge telescopes in the parking lot of the visitor center. When it was dark enough to see the stars, he talked a bit about the two planets on either side of the full moon that was up and shining very brightly. Saturn and Jupiter. We then each got a chance to view both planets in the telescopes. Peter was very excited to be able to see the rings around Saturn. This State Park is designated a Dark Sky park, which means that the air is very clear, and there is no light pollution so you can see the stars more easily. Unfortunately, the full moon was so bright, it was harder to see the stars. But, it was really beautiful, seeing the sky and the park in moon light.
Setting up the RV in the unlevel spot photo:
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