Exploring the Southwest's: Grand circle: an eye-popping tour of remote rock sanctuaries, rugged rivers, and remnants of long-gone civilizations takes in portions of Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico - Tour of the Month

Travel America, May-June, 2002 by Darlene P. Copp

The phrases "takes your breath away" and "leaves you speechless" were quite possibly coined somewhere in the spellbinding Grand Circle region of the American Southwest, which encompasses most of southern Utah and northern Arizona, along with the southwestern corner of Colorado and the northwestern corner of New Mexico. Its wow-evoking landscapes are situated largely on the Colorado Plateau, a place unique in all the world for its ruggedly exposed and exotically eroded geological record. Alternating periods of ancient shallow seas and shifting sand dunes resulted in today's intriguing rock strata. The oldest layers are revealed in the Grand Canyon, one of more than two dozen national park units that preserve some of the most outstanding acreage in the Grand Circle.

Across 1,400 miles, high-desert land-forms in astonishing varieties, precipitous gorges and sprawling canyons, and monumental waterways, plus the highest concentration of prehistoric ruins and rock art in the country, create an overwhelming travel experience. We vacation-deprived Americans, however, usually see the Grand Circle in slices over several trips.

A Grand Canyon itinerary, for instance, might pick up Arizona's Walnut Canyon and Wupatki national monuments, sheltering hundreds of pre-Columbian dwellings, on the way to the Canyon's South Rim. From there, driving the 215 miles to the North Rim, so isolated that it gets only about 10 percent of the park's total visitation, offers a short detour to Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, where Lake Powell boat tours dock near Rainbow Bridge, the world's largest natural bridge. Crossing into Utah to see Zion National Park's towering cliffs and Bryce Canyon's colorful mazes of hoodoos (eroded rock spires) might round out a tour of the Grand Circle's westernmost attractions.

On the Circle's eastern side, Colorado's beautiful Mesa Verde National Park embraces a world-class collection of ancestral Puebloan cliff dwellings. Additional prehistoric sites ring the Four Corners (the area where the Grand Circle states meet), including New Mexico's Aztec Ruins and Chaco Culture National Historical Park. On the Navajo Reservation in Arizona, Canyon de Chelly National Monument protects a stunning sheer-walled canyon occupied by Native American cultures from the Archaic period to the present.

Recently, my husband and I set out to day-hike in Utah's national parks in the middle of the Grand Circle, which is, incidentally, a promotional designation by an association of private and public-sector members. We embarked on our slick-rock (smoothly eroded sandstone) tour in Moab, Utah's adventuring capital. Besides providing a wide range of lodging and dining, this former mining town outfits all manner of rock and river excursions. Jani Deal, our Tag-A-Long Expeditions guide, explained how 1988 ushered in Moab's "blue Lycra" era: "All these people were running around town in their underwear, fluorescent to boot," referring to the mountain bikers who have made Moab their mecca.

For our exploration of the Needles District in Canyonlands National Park, Jani navigated a 1982 Land Cruiser down Salt Creek, explaining landforms, leading us to 900-year-old ruins and even older pictographs, and showing us how to pinch and sniff sage. On our own, we hiked in Canyonlands' Island in the Sky District (a 43-square-mile mesa reached by crossing a 40-foot-wide neck of land) for panoramas of cliffs, mesas, fins, pinnacles, distant snow-capped mountains, and a multitude of canyons extending beyond the horizon.

In nearby Arches National Park, which harbors the greatest density of stone spans in the world, many of the 2,000 arches and windows can be hiked to, walked under, and admired for their massive and graceful forms, all sculpted by the forces of differential erosion. The free-standing, photogenic Delicate Arch was just a speck in the distance until we climbed a slickrock trail for a closer view. A meadow hike rewarded us with solitude at Broken Arch, and later we relaxed in the cool breezes under Double Arch to complete a perfect day.

After hiking among Puebloan ruins at Hovenweep National Monument, we enjoyed the food and the excellent Native American arts and crafts at the Twin Rocks Cafe and Trading Post in tiny Bluff. In Goosenecks State Park, we witnessed the entrenched meandering of the San Juan River 1,000 feet below us. And in Monument Valley, we gazed at the redrock monoliths from our private balcony at Goulding's Trading Post and Lodge, a Utah historical site.

On Utah 261, we climbed 1,000 feet on a three-mile gravel patch with steep tight turns called the Moki Dugway, built for uranium-ore trucks in the 1950s, on our way to Natural Bridges National Monument. The first of Utah's geological treasures to be protected by the National Park Service showcases three extraordinary rock spans. A nine-mile road leads to bridge overlooks, but hiking to their bases is the only way to really appreciate the threesome or to "discover" the intriguing rock art on Kachina Bridge.