Day 8: Canyonlands, Needles District and on to the Grand Canyon (Friday)

We left the hotel and headed way out in the middle of nowhere to get to the Needles district of the Canyonlands National Park. It took about an hour and a half and it wasn't until we got there that we realized it was nothing like the Island in the Sky. The visitor center was small and didn't have a lot of information. There is little "scenic drive" in the Needles District and few short hikes. We did the Roadside Ruin hike which was only a third of a mile and led to an ancient Native American granary. Apparently it was a common thing in the area to create a mortar and stone granary to store fruits, vegetables and seeds. They often had openings only in the roof and are still fairly complete today. From there we drove around a little more trying to find other small hikes, but the rest didn't appeal to us.

Mike found a 4x4 road to Elephant Hill and we decided to take that. It was only about 5 mi in and not too rough. We couldn't continue on the last part because it had extreme caution signs. Basically if we didn't have a lifted jeep, we weren't going to make it. Luckily, the road let us actually see the famous needles the park is named for. They were way off and there were "mushrooms" in front but we still saw them. We headed back to the visitor center, passing the only outlook in the whole park.

From there, we headed straight to the Grand Canyon. We were warned of thunderstorms and kept a careful watch on the storm clouds we could see to the west. Bree took anti-nausea medicine again and so was in and out of sleep. At one point when Bree woke up Mike was steering the car carefully through really rough winds. Another time, there was a painted wild (?) horse on the side of the road. The last time Bree woke up it was because the rain was so loud. All of a sudden, Mike found himself in the middle of a fierce thunderstorm. It cleared up and we continued across more desert. All in all it took about seven hours to get to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon's closest town, Jacob Lake.

Jacob Lake is a small tourist town at the corner of the main highway and the road down to the North Rim. Its over 40 miles from this intersection to the North Rim and the campground there fills up way in advance. So we decided to camp at the campground maintained by the Kaibab National Forest up at Jacob Lake. The campground was nice, potable water and pit toilets and we were able to pick our place. We had our leftover spaghetti which was good. It seems everywhere though that you can't wash your hair or dishes. So Mike had to fill the pot with some water, walk somewhere else to wash it with soap and the sponge, go dump it, walk back to rinse it, repeat. We had also grabbed s'mores supplies so we lit the stove up again and made ourselves some s'mores. Mike had to search everywhere for the "right" stick to whittle down for our s'more stick. We went to bed early to get a jump on tomorrow!