Bluff, Utah Part 2

Friday, July 24^th was another car trip day.  We started with a drive through Valley of the Gods.  It is a 16 mile dirt road that wanders between the rock formations.  They have named some of the formations.  Some were easy to tell how they got their names and others well, it took more imagination.

Sitting Hen

Lady in a Bathtub

We had our picnic lunch at Goosenecks State Park.    The goosenecks are a very winding part of the San Juan River.  It is so bendy that it takes six miles of bends to cover 2 miles on land.  The canyon is 1,200 feet from the top down down to the canyon bottom. They are very impressive but hard to capture on film. See the pictures from Bluff, Utah Part 1 for a view of them from Muley Point.

View of one of the goose necks from the top - it is 1200 feet to the bottom

If you blow up this picture our Jeep is on the hill !!  

We drove by Monument Valley, there is a large entry fee and then you have to take a tour so we decided not to go in.  You can see many of the monuments from the highway.

You should recognize this from Forest Gump...he ran down this road in the movie

We did stop at the Goulding’s Museum and learned about their positive impact on the area.  You can learn more about the Goulding’s here.  On our way back to Bluff we stopped at Sand Island Campground to look at the Petroglyphs there.  We enjoyed this large collection of petroglyphs.

Here is one of our favorites

Saturday, July 25^th we drove over to Hovenweep National Monument.  Hovenweep means deserted valley.  It is a community of Anasazi ruins that surrounds a valley.  They were good architects.  We enjoyed the visitors center and then hiked the trail around the valley.  During our hike we saw our first Collared Lizard.  He just stood there and posed for us.

Above and below samples of the ruins at Hovenweep

Collared Lizzard