Early morning at Colorado National Monument

We have done our research, and we are ready to tackle the best of the trails in the Colorado National Monument. This park, in the northwest corner of this state, is as big as many national parks. It was hard to narrow it down to just a couple trails. We were up early, and drove the pickup to the southeast entrance of this sizable park. We were on the trail soon after sunrise.

We were welcomed to the trail by large groups of these beautiful purple flowers. After a google search, Denisa determined that they are Desert Four o'clocks.

That means they bloom at the end of the day, and stay pretty all night. They are a beautiful discovery for early morning hikers. We don't remember seeing these lovely wild blooms before--maybe because we don't get on the trails early enough?!? They were just perfect this early morning.

We are on the Echo Canyon trail, the visitor center ranger's favorite trail and his best recommendation for us.

It is pleasantly cool this early morning, and it was a nice walk through this white slickrock canyon.

The trail ends in a tall waterfall--during the spring when the river is running. By the end of the summer, hikers have to just imagine water gushing over this tall ledge. Denisa would have been very wet standing there in the spring.

But today we headed our dry hiking boots back on the same trail.

Another sign that we are at the end of the season is the prickly pear cactus. Instead of flowers, their blooms have turned into bright red tunas.

We're seeing more of those lovely purple blooms as we head out on our second trail of the morning.

The Four o'clock plants are huge, as they obviously like their home here in Colorado National Monument.

This is the Devil's Kitchen Trail, and we soon got our first picture of Mark standing among the columns of the Kitchen.

In the middle of this desert sand and cactus, we found this interesting rock room formed by huge upright boulders. It has been named "Devil's Kitchen" for some reason. We think it should be named something like "Another of God's Wonders." Denisa is deep into this boulder wonder when Mark snapped this picture.

The boulders inside are as big as motor homes as we scrambled to the end.

We have found another of God's wonders here in the middle of the desert!

We had been all alone on this hike until a large family showed up to turn our tranquility into a noisy climb-fest as they scrambled over the big boulders. It was noisy, but never crowded like the national parks this summer. We could still get good pictures by ourselves, and the lighting was lovely to show off the big rocks.

We can play the game of "Can you find Mark or Denisa?" in the pictures of Devil's Kitchen.

We hiked on higher to get a bird's eye view of the kitchen. By this time our cool morning temperatures are heating up.

We noticed that the Four o'clocks are beginning to fold up in the heat. They are good indicators of the best time to hike around here. Each bloom only lasts one day, and a whole new batch of beautiful purple flowers will open when the sun begins to fade today.

After finishing our two morning hikes, we drove 23 miles on Rim Rock Drive that winds through Colorado National Monument. We stopped at several viewpoints, and took more short walks. Our last hike in the park was the one-mile nature trail across from the visitor center. It has numbered posts that correspond with the description in the accompanying nature trail leaflet. It has a surprise ending in a very tall sandstone alcove dead end.

This national monument could easily be a national park. But instead, it is hidden away in northwest Colorado and is seldom crowded. We did hear on the news, however, that they are experiencing a record number of visitors this summer. While they had only one tour bus visit last summer during Covid, they've already had 37 so far this year. The visitor center has a maximum capacity of 30 people, which means that a bus-load of people can't all get inside at the same time. It feels like all of America is looking for a place to enjoy nature, and we recommend a stop to see God's wonders at Colorado National Monument. 

Welcome to Colorado and its National Monument!

We left Moab, Utah, this morning and the GPS insisted on taking us west to meet up with the I-70. But we wanted to go east on Highway 128 to get the lovely view of the tall red cliffs along the Colorado River.

We're guessing that most motor home drivers wouldn't choose this route, where those lovely red cliffs are so close to the edge of that very narrow highway.

But this route is definitely more scenic. It took us past the Fischer Towers, and we even saw some kayakers floating down the very low waters of the Colorado River.

Did we mention those red rock walls so close to the highway? Sometimes they lean towards the road in such a way that a very tall motor home has to cross the center line going around a blind curve just to avoid hitting the wall!

This is also a open range grazing area for livestock. After noticing the wild bull warning signs in Nevada, we are glad to say that the Utah cows look more docile. Utah's cow signs look more like escapees from the local dairy, rather than Nevada's cow signs that look like they came directly from a Mexican bull fight.

After we crossed the Colorado River, the rocks turned from red to white . . .

and we were suddenly out of the mountains entirely. Our landscape turned to stark white and flat. Quite a contrast in just a few miles.

Highway 128 led us to I-70, with an interesting sign, "Watch for eagles on interstate." No eagles spotted today, as we passed the next sign into colorful Colorado.

It's a 100-mile drive to our next campground, Monument RV in Fruita, Colorado. From there It's jut two miles to the entrance of Colorado National Monument.

It's the hottest part of the day, but we decided to drive to the park's visitor center to get a map and plan our strategy for seeing this large national monument. Even though it is 95 degrees, we decided to hike the one-mile Canyon Rim Trail, with great views straight down into Wedding Canyon.

It was hot, but we decided to add another half-mile to take the spur trail over to Window Rock. We got this picture of Mark standing on Window Rock . . .

even though there is a fence that prohibits that. Mark pointed out that he didn't CROSS the fence--he went AROUND the fence to stand on Window Rock. He's such a stickler for following all the rules.

The walls of the canyon lead to steep drop offs into the canyon.

After our hot hike, we were ready to leave the park for the day. But a traveler at the visitor center said they had just seen a mountain sheep about a half-mile deeper into the park. So we drove the winding road until we found the same sheep.

That drive deeper into the park took us to the trailhead of the Otto Trail. That will be another one-mile hike to see the best views of some of the largest rock formations in Wedding Canyon. The canyon got its name from the fact that John Otto married his bride in this canyon. After their wedding, they lived at the bottom of the canyon because he insisted that he needed to be close to his livestock. The marriage lasted only a few weeks, when she found out how remote her new home was. It seems like they should have discussed their living arrangements before the wedding. The picture below was taken at the end of the Otto Trail. This is the Pipe Organ in front, and Praying Hands behind it.

A little further on the trail is "Independence Monument" where the wedding actually took place.

A sign nearby explains that every 4th of July since 1911, Mr. Otto made the difficult trek up this steep formation to plant an American flag on top. The red lines on the sign outline the path he took. That same path is used by present-day climbers to get to the top of Independence Monument.

After making two hikes in the afternoon heat, it's time to get out of the sun. As we drove back, the mountain goat was in the same place--obviously accustomed to the traffic and visitors rolling down their windows to take pictures.

We drove the steep and winding road out of the park, that includes some tunnels that aren't very tall. We sure couldn't drive the motor home through these tunnels!

We made the drive back to the motor home to take showers because we have a date tonight with cousins that live in the area. In our drive across the country, we are glad to be in Colorado now, and we'll be exploring more of this Colorado National Monument.

God's Ancient Art at Fischer Towers

Six years ago we were given the advice to visit Fischer Towers--about 26 miles northeast of Moab. That's basically in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by desert. We remember that hike so fondly that we wanted to see this unique area again. So even though it was sunny and the temperature was over 90 degrees, we braved the heat for a repeat performance of the towers.

We just got far enough into the hike to turn the first corner when we began to hear voices high over head. Now we have heard voices in our heads before, but this seemed WAY over our heads. Then we saw movement at the top of the tower named "Ancient Art." That's the tall one in the picture below with the fancy curly-q on top.

Wait! There seems to be an extra something on the top of that curly-q.

That "something" talks and moves! We even heard some clapping and a shout of victory. We didn't have our good camera, but we could see that was a person on top of the curly-q!

It's hard to put some scale to this picture, but that person was very high above us on Ancient Art.

When we moved further down our hike, we could see a different angle of the curly-q. A second climber was making the final approach to the top, while two more on the right were holding the safety ropes.

We applauded and yelled "good job!" when we witnessed the second person make it to the tippy-top. Even though they were so high above us, we could hear their "thank you" response very clearly. From the picture below we could see that other towers like "Titan" and "Echo" were taller than "Ancient Art," but none quite as ornate.

If you look carefully, you can see a tiny dot in the middle at the bottom of the picture below. That tiny dot is Denisa.

Watching the climbers was a fun beginning to our hike, but we finally continued. That would include doing a bit of climbing of our own. But ours was only on an 8-foot ladder.

The trails here at Fischer Towers can be narrow with steep drop-offs

but we still love the views out here in the middle of no where.

On our hike back to the pickup, we met the four people that we had watched make the summit to the curly-q. It was fun to talk with them, and we exchanged phone numbers so we could text them the pictures we had taken from the ground. They are four people that have relocated to Utah from all over the country, and became friends because of their common love of climbing up tall things. This was the first curly-q summit for three of them, led by the more experienced female climber that had done it once before. 

They started the climb about four hours earlier this morning, and they were glad to be getting out of the heat as we neared the parking lot. We were too. We end the blog with one more picture of Denisa in the bottom left corner, staring up at another of God's wonders. You can see the climber at the top of the curly-q. That mountain might be named "Ancient Art," but we think of Fischer's Towers as "God's Art."

This is our last day visiting Moab, and we have packed in lots of hiking. But tomorrow we'll move down the road to more of God's wonders.