Wheelchair Holidays : American Canyons of Utah

The Canyons Of Southern Utah

America's "Grand Canyon" is rightly recognised as one of the natural wonders of the world. Photographs and words all fail to fully describe it. Even the IMAX film does not do it justice. The truth is that even firsthand it is difficult to fully absorb the canyons, and reality is that most visitors spend an average of just fourty minutes doing so. Riding and hiking down, or taking an aircraft flight over, the canyon will add to a greater sense of appreciation, but these cater to a minority of visitors. One wants to take in more, but can be frustrated by limitations such as age, fitness, and transport.

What one needs to do is cast the traveling eye wider than the Grand Canyon itself. It is enormous, but actually extents further than the park boundaries. Consulting a map and looking towards the northeast one will see an extension of the greater canyon complex flowing in to Southern Utah. It is made up of a loose collection of national parks that offer the traveler a wonderful holidaying experience. What is most appealing about these smaller (Bryce Canyon NP is only 29km long), more specialised parks, is that they allow one to get closer to the canyons without having to resort to aircraft or packhorses. One can drive a hire car in to the river base of canyons, the trails are manageable, the flora and fauna are varied, as are the geological formations.

In the bottom left-hand corner of the State of Utah one will find our first stop, Zion National Park. Zion's rock walls are a rich, rust red under most light conditions, but at sunset they appear to come alive and glow from within. "The Narrows" is a comfortable walking trail alongside the river in the base of the canyon that ends at a point where the trail is so confined by the rock walls towering above that the path gives way to the river. Protected within Zion National Park's 593 sq.km is the world's largest arch, Kolob Arch, with a span that measures 94.5m. Wildlife such as mule deer, golden eagles, and mountain lions also inhabit the park.

Continuing east along Scenic Byway 12, in Bryce Canyon National Park erosion has shaped colourful Claron limestones, sandstones, and mudstones into thousands of spires, fins, pinnacles, and mazes, collectively called "hoodoos". Pioneer farmer in these parts in the 1870's Ebenezer Bryce is claimed to have said rather dryly that these mazes were "a hell of a place to loose a cow". "Inspiration Point" is arguably one of the most amazing sights we have ever seen, with the combination of geological formations, colours and light and shadows taxing one's spatial perception. The only method of dealing with this is to sit down for a good while and slowly absorb all the detail. A walk down into the valley basin, amongst the layered pinnacles, is to cast oneself into "Honey I Shrunk The Kids".

Capital Reef National Park offers no stopovers, but provided a stark contrast of harsh beauty and inhospitable surroundings. It was blistering hot, bleak and extreme, yet exhibited the most amazing varieties of sand and rock colourings we have seen to date.

Canyonlands National Park preserves a colorful landscape of sedimentary sandstones eroded into countless canyons, mesas and buttes by the Colorado River and its tributaries. The Colorado and Green rivers divide the park into four districts: the Island in the Sky, the Needles, the Maze and the rivers themselves. While the districts share a primitive desert history seen in the many petroglyphs, each retains its own character and offers different opportunities for exploration. The nearby Dead Horse Point State Park will bring visions of the Grand Canyon rushing back. Here the Colorado River takes a sharp bend and gives one the long vistas and eroded canyon walls for which its bigger brother is famous.

Arches National Park, the last stop, and is "just across the road" from Canyonlands. The town of Moab, sandwiched between the two parks, serves as an excellent base from which to explore, if one can escape the country diners with their soda fountains and pancakes dripping syrup! Arches contains the largest number of sandstone arches in the world with 2000 of these structures in an area covering only 76 000 acres! The most famous of these is "Delicate Arch", an internationally recognised symbol of Utah.

Whilst this may be the end of the line for our Grand Canyon Geological Extension Tour it is of course not the end of Southern Utah since one can continue east to the Rocky Mountains, but that is worthy of another story. The Southern Utah parks we've visited here are relatively closely grouped together, within comfortable driving distance of one another. They are also small, allowing one to allocate one day to each park. All have small towns on their borders that cater to tourists in need of accommodation and dining. It is worth bearing in mind when exploring these parks that the route out in the morning will look very different on the way back in the afternoon as the light changes through the day. An open top car might also be a good idea! Those canyon walls fill a cars windscreen in no time!

Refer to the National Park Services website for more info : www.nps.gov/parks.html.

I am permanently confined to a wheelchair through spinal muscular atrophy. My wife and I have repeatedly proved that travelling in a wheelchair is neither daunting, nor limiting, and hope our experiences will be of benefit to others. Please do not hesitate to contact us should you require any additional information.

Reproduced with kind permission of Hilton Purvis
P O Box 371,
Noordhoek, 7979,
South Africa.

Wheelchair Holidays : American Canyons of Utah