Moab, Utah, mountains
and the immensity of the canyons
Utah, going to Moab
From Bluff in full direction north, toute 191 takes us to Moab.
The vegetation is no longer desert here and a forest of scrub and tall trees turns the landscape green.
To the point that after Blanding, a village is called "Verdure".
Then the cheerful town of Monticello is a sort of anomaly of coquetry in the almost Mediterranean landscape.
Monticello owes its development especially to the uranium mines of the region, that of Moab included. (the richest in the USA) and vanadium, mines between 1940 and 1965.
An enormous work of cleaning up radioactive waste was then undertaken by the Federal Government from 1989 to 2004 (we will see another example in the suburbs of Moab).
During a break after Monticello, behind the bushes that run along the road lie two deer paws and a skin that has been completely cut up, there on the fifteen meters which separate the roadside from a barrier.
A coyote feast one of the previous nights ??
Then the road descends a slope in slow laces towards a very vast valley.
Further on, it runs along a colossal rock which has the weird shape of an almost circular bell surmounted by a hat, object of the interest of tourists.
It's the so-called "Church Rock".
A bifurcation on the left, and this is Route 133, also called "Needles Overlook Road"; we reach the point of view after a long journey, north of the Indian Creek River.
All along, small elongated massifs, very eroded, seem to sag, and are painted in various strata.
Utah, detour to Canyonlands
from the south-east :
the "Needles"
The region called "CanyonLands National Park" is reached here, itself composed of several large parts immediately southwest of Moab.
The southernmost part is called "The Needles".
Arrived at the "Needles Overlook" by Route 133, the cliff suddenly overlooks a huge plateau, some 450 to 500 meters below, the bottom of which is notched with canyons.
Horizon is the only limit of the other side of the immense depression.
For a bit, it seems the width would be here more important than that of the "Grand Canyon". In fact, the latter holds the record of gigantism.
As the crow flies, 18 km (only) separate Canyonlands' "Grand View Point Overlook" to the north and the "Needles Overlook" to the southeast.
At the bottom is the unavoidable Colorado River. But it's here joined by the "Green River", which is coming from the north.
The confluence is not only that of the two rivers, but of their respective vast canyons, to which is added as an immediate neighbor that of Indian Creek, somewhere below.
The panorama is striking and sumptuous, too quickly contemplated.
At the time of the conquest, the USA were gradually formed and learned democracy by walking without a priori.
Everybody had the easy trigger.
Amendment n ° 2 of the Constitution sets in stone the right to have a weapon ; we know what the toll is today.
Anyway, the colt was so familiar that the name of "Six Shooter" was given to a few conical mountains beyond the valley because the profile of their summit evokes (still for the moment, but the erosion will come to an end one day) a revolver shooting skyward.
By taking the 191 northwards, it appears a large arch on a fin above the road to the east ; it's calles "Wilson Arch". Already spectacular.
Especially when the selfie obsession takes over ...
Utah,
Moab, fallen queen ... of uranium
Finally, the 191 descends, meandering towards a wide deep valley named "Moab Fault", where the city stretches out at length, almost languidly.
The "fault" resembles alpine trough valleys, without having suffered the same kind of erosion.
The principle of naming streets perpendicular to the axial avenue that crosses villages and small towns is everywhere the same : a "Center Avenue", whose intersection with the axial avenue refers to the heart of the city.
From this are defined the avenues which are parallel to it towards the north (100 North, 200 North…) or towards the south (100 South, 200 South…).
It is simple and clear, at least as long as the topography of the agglomeration is clearly oriented in relation to the north-south axis (or the east-west axis, which is the same).
In Moab, along the 191 are restaurants, hotels, motels, groceries, and especially many interesting souvenir shops.
In Center Avenue perpendicular to 191, a large and modern library with friendly and available staff, gives free access to PCs and the Internet.
Almost opposite, on a sports field oversized, young teenagers caparisoned likes (necessarily) American football players, but without the helmet, train peacefully and methodically under the guidance of their coach.
When aesthetics dress the function : fire trucks, garbage trucks are shiny, immaculate, sparkling !!! As for the parade.
Who is so spending time, in the depths of the garages, to dust, polish, them everyday tools? The result is in any case always astonishing, spectacular, but nice.
Almost a pity to collect rubbish with such beautiful trucks !!
Unlike with us in France where the container sometimes seems worse than the content.
In the immediate vicinity of the very long curve of the 191 which has just crossed the Colorado to the north, a very large, well-surrounded land is constantly watered. Like agricultural land very carefully maintained, but from which nothing emerges.
Heavy earthmoving machines are activated.
It is a landfill for old radioactive waste, which is being transferred to the north.
There was indeed one of the largest deposits of uranium ore in the USA. ; vanadium (see Monticello), open-pit potash, manganese, and even oil and gas were also mined in the area.
After stopping of uranium mining, the very significant waste (16 million tons) resulting from the extraction of the ore, "tailings", sand residue accumulated on the spot could not stay there, so close to the city and along the Colorado River.
Another depot in a safer place in the long term, and devoid of population was inaugurated in 2008, on the heights at the junction between routes 191 from Moab and route 70, at "Crescent Junction".
On a monorail railway line which runs along the 191 like a straight line, the transfer of this waste, started in 2009, and should be completed in 2025, at the rate of 4 weekly passages of a train of 136 wagons (load of approximately 5,000 tons).
Utah,
Canyonlands from the north:
"the island in the sky"
North from Moab, the 191 runs along the railway line, interminable and straight like a black line.
Some 8 miles later, a fork to the left : Route 313 climbs a plateau, where two Mesas face to face, bow to bow, are named after two ships that clashed during the Civil War, "Monitor" and "Merrimac".
After a few long laces, it bends towards the west, then sharply towards the south.
We are promised more incredible views of Canyonlands, this time from the north, opposite to those we saw in "Needles Overlook" from the southeast.
Towards the east, the massif of the three characteristic summits of La Sal can be seen from far away.
The 313 unfolds over a very large plateau, the altitude of which varies between 1700 and 1900 meters.
After having left the path to the "Dead Horse Point" on the left (not seen), it will soon be the Visitor Center of what is here named "Island in the Sky" (a superbly named site). The very high rocky outcrop dominates the confluence between the canyon of Colorado and that of "Green River".
The perspectives are limitless to the point that the background drowns in an almost hazy fusion of colors, since the distance no longer makes it possible to observe the details of the relief.
Different from the Grand Canyon downstream, but also and otherwise staggering.
Beyond, only the massif of La Sal or that of the Abajo Mountains offers a very relative stop to the gaze.
A dizzying white track allows the more daring - including (too long) motorhomes - to lead down the side of the cliff in narrow laces towards the intermediate plate.
But at the end of the extraordinary "Island in the Sky" promontory, the view of the "Green River" is even more breathtaking, from the "Grand View Point Overlook".
In the huge lower plateau, other deeper canyons are hollowed out with very sharp and dark edges.
We only see from our platform the black sliced upper outline, and the close and very ramified meanders of the river at the bottom.
This relief at three levels, the upper plateau, the immense intermediate plateau some 600 meters below, finally the deep and boxed bed of the river at the bottom, 200 or 300 meters below, the differentiation of the colors of the strata, everything here illustrates like an open book the geological history of the region .
Another point of view overlooks on a sharp relief which seems to be, this time as close as possible, one of the "Six Shooters" (but who will be able to confirm it, ... or deny it?) already seen from "Needles Overlook" ".
If the breathtaking relief does not encourage shortcuts, it naturally also preserves its integrity, an argument that the authorities use to justify the pointlessness of building works of art in the Pont de Millau style (perfectly justifiable here).
Although such a work thrown over a canyon would certainly not lack allure.
Utah
... and a few other original sites in Canyonland Park
On the way, a walk of 800 meters allows to see, posed on the very edge of our plateau, an elegant arch which underlies the vertiginous background.
This is the " Mesa Arch ".
Even up to to excess : a young Chinese couple do not stop self-harm in a thousand and one ways and without any embarrassment. As if they would had " privatized " space. Irritation not feigned from other tourists and Marlene in particular.
And the tourist becomes Lilliputian again.
Hyper-narcissists love their "urbi et orbi" image so much (PS : "to the city and the world ") ... Thank you social networks !!!
After this phase of boiling, Marlene needed a little break...
... before approaching a few miles away a rounded summit that must be climbed to fall above a geological anomaly : a real crater, in this region which has not seen any volcanic activity for tens of millions of years.
It's the "Upheaval Dome".
Vertiginous, it's surprisingly colored where ocher gives way to light blue-green-gray and wine-red purple.
Geologists are divided on its origin, which is no more of volcanic origin than that of the entire region. : saline drainage ? meteorite impact ?
Returning to Moab, a little behind the cliffs, the plateau accumulates very massive and thick eroded rocks, very spread out like bakers' dough balls. They peak 50 to 80 meters above the road.
This rock group is called "the Whale Rock" because of these immense volumes collapsed with slowly curving profiles. But the evocative power comes to an end.
Without aiming for the top, however easy, we are attracted by a crevice, towards which we are going. It is only a hollow of rock concentrating a little humidity.
The opportunity, without too much effort (easy for children), to feel under the foot of what these rocks are made, to slalom between the tortured shrubs which grow in tendrils, which seek such rock shelters protected from the wind, or cling to the slightest residue of moisture from the very rare rains.
These small cacti with long, mustachioed spines, able to withstand extreme temperatures and survive almost without water are another example.