Needles: The Drive
The Canyonlands is a large enough national park that it actually has three distinct districts: Island in the Sky, The Needles, and the Maze. Highway 313 leads to the Island in the Sky District and is 10 miles north of Moab. Highway 211 leads to the Needles District and is 40 miles south of Moab. The Maze is remote and only accessible by foot - and only when accompanied by a professional guide already familiar with the flood-prone and twisting sandstone canyons of that region.
We have decided to tackle the Needles today.
Was given my tour of modern and classic country music. Turns out that I am more familiar with country music than I expected. Must have something to do with living (and driving!) in Texas all of these years.
We passed Hole "N The Rock gift shop and roadside curiosity. It is allegedly an historic attraction and natural treasure; but it is also unquestionably a roadside curiosity. It is a home (and gift shop, as they so frequently remind you) blasted out of solid rock over a period of twelve years by a man with a dream. There were probably a few other things wrong with him, too. Had they also possessed the world's shortest donkey, or Utah's Largest Ball of Twine, we might have stopped. As it was, they only had a petting zoo full of normal animals and no two-headed mutants, so we had to carry on to our primary destination.