A Scenic Drive From Moab

26 Aug 2010--We were feeling a little lazy today, so instead of more hiking, we decided to take one of the scenic drives suggested by Carol and John, who were here about 3 weeks ago. We took Scenic Byway 128 for about 20 miles up to Red Cliffs Lodge for an afternoon of leisure.

It is crazy that you don't have to be inside a national park to see just beautiful scenery in Utah. The whole 20+ miles we drove up to the Lodge we were surrounded by mountains, red rocks, and the Colorado River.

For most of the ride you are in pretty close quarters, with mountains right on top of you. What is surprising is that there are no signs at all saying "Watch for Falling Rocks," "Rock Slides," nothing! There are also no signs about flash floods, which we know happen because there were signs in Arches National Park about not driving in an area of dry creek beds during flooding.

Cathy said it is surprising that the state of Wyoming spends tax dollars on a Jackalope joke, but you can't even get Utah to spend money on rock slide and flash flood warnings!

These rocks are huge...and there are a ton of them...it is really amazing that a road like this open at all! haha

Look at the red mud not just on the side of the road, but in the road itself.

Anyway, we got to the Red Cliffs Lodge and Castle Creek Winery, which is a hotel/motel/restaurant/winery/museum and overall dude-type ranch all wrapped in one. We were mostly interested in the museum that Carol and John had told us about, but we checked out the winery, too. haha

Walking out the back of the restaurant, this is your view of the area.

In this stitch pic, the winery is on the right and the Colorado River can be seen thru the trees.

They have a movie museum here, free to the public, where they have posters of all the movies, TV commercials and music videos made in this area. There is whole room downstairs from the restaurant dedicated to John Wayne and all the movies he made here. I swear to God, when you are driving out here, and if you are my age, all the old movies we grew up with as kids, all the old westerns, come alive in your imagination!

Here are just a few of the posters they had on display.

Just about a mile up the road from the Lodge we stopped to take this stitch pic. I know I have seen this scene in about 20 movies growing up. It almost looks fake, but it is beautifully real, I swear!

Check out this mountain...as you get closer, the side of the mountain almost looks like a church in Rome, or maybe Brigham Young based his Temple on this rock formation!!!

Tomorrow we are going to Canyonlands National Park...can it compete with what we have seen so far??? I can only hope so!