Utah: Day 3 - Aztec Butte Trail and Viewpoints

The day after our Syncline Trail hike, we decided to take it pretty easy. Not only were we pretty tired from yesterday, but we also all had a poor sleep because we had a sandstorm hit our tents last night! The wind came up as we were falling asleep last night, and kept blowing strong the whole night. Not only did the wind make the tent fly flap loudly, but the fine sand of our campsite was blown straight through the tent mesh and into our tent. Sand was everywhere! We were breathing it in and our tent was trying to blow away! I felt like the tourist centre should have told us what to do in case of a sandstorm, since I figured I didn't want to get out of my tent in it. In any case, we suffered through the night and got up sleepy in the morning.

We packed up and headed out. This was the sign at the entrance to our campsite:No kidding, we figured that out yesterday!
We started the day out by hiking the Aztec Butte Trail in Canyonlands National Park. The name of this hike is actually a misnomer, since it wasn't the Aztec's, but actually the Puebloan Natives who used the area to store grain about 10,000 years ago. The hike was 2 miles long and we took our time at it, climbing around two buttes to check out the graineries made there ages ago.Here's some of the cacti found in that area:A little lizard guy on the trail:You can see one of the buttes in the picture below. Notice the darker layer of sandstone at the top. This is where the wind has cut out the rock to form partial caves. This is where the Puebloans built little walls to make shelters for the grains they grew on the planes.

Here we are, walking around the cliffs looking at all the caves and stuctures.



Garrett took a picture from above of me climbing up to the top of the butte. Looks scarier and steeper than it was.Here are some pictures of the surrounding landscape from on top of one of the buttes:
After our hike, we drove back through the park and stopped at a bunch of view points and took some pictures.In the afternoon, we decided to go swimming and cool off. We thought we could swim in the Colorado River, however when we asked at the information centre where a good beach was, the attendant was appalled and horrified that we wanted to swim in the river.
"Oh no! You don't want to swim in the Colorado! You'll drown!" he said. "There is quicksand and rapids, so don't swim there." Instead, he recommended a man-made lake just outside of town, which we promptly found and relaxed at.
After the lake, where we spent several hours but only swam once because the water was unreasonably cold (oddly, since everything else in Moab is unreasonably hot!), we finished up our afternoon with some ice-cream.We had to eat it quickly, since it melts pretty quick there!
At this point, we were all trying to decide what to do the next day. Joelle and Ian wanted to do a hike in the Needles region of Canyonlands National Park, but Garrett and I were really hesitant to endure another Syncline Trail experience. The shortest of the hikes was 7 miles, but sounded really lame. The coolest hike was 11 miles, 3 miles longer than the Crater hike. Garrett and I talked about it and decided that we would rather not do the hike with Ian and Joelle, and instead booked a white water rafting trip for the next day with a local outfitter.
We headed back to camp for dinner and took some pictures of the sun setting.Beautiful shots, after which we hit the hay with the hopes of a peaceful, non-sandstorm ridden night.