Needles section of Canyonlands

Newspaper Rock

We’re off to the south end of Canyonlands National Park, called the needles. We stopped on the way to see Newspaper Rock, a series of petroglyphs and pictogryphs. There were about 6 of us there and we never felt that we found them. On returning later that afternoon, we found that we had hiked off on the wrong side of the parking lot. There were many pictures obvious on the right side. These pictures were created from 3 different cultures. Most of the human like shapes look like big men with antlers, and there are lots of big horn sheep.

Needles section as seen from Grand View Point

The needles section was fairly quick to explore by car. It’s obvious, why it is called needles as there are many spires that apparently go for miles (you can only see the first row of needles from the roads). There actually isn’t too much to see from the car, other than canyons (duh!) and rock formations. It was more interesting to hike on the pothole trail to get a closer look and the roadside ruin trail to get up close to an ancient granary.