Day Seven - Apr 14, 2025

Island In The Sky, Canyonlands to The Needles, Canyonlands

Tonight's Lodging: Needles Campground, Loop A, Site 15

Today's Weather: High of 78, low of 50. Cloudy

High Point: Lucking into a stellar campsite and getting a Needles loop hike in

Low Point: 6:00am

Touristic Events: Worrying about lodging

Travel Tip: Hope for the best, have a plan B

Miles By Foot: 12.5

Daily Didactic

For a day with uncontrollable logistics, today worked out exceptionally. We rose at the ungodly hour of 6:00am to break down camp by headlamp and hit the road. Skipping breakfast for brevity, but we had our gear and ourselves piled into the 4Runner by 7:15 and exited Island In The Sky at sunrise.
The second half of our two week sojourn will be in the Needles District of Canyonlands, a little over two hours south with stops. The issue (and the cause of our early departure) is with lodging, as the extraordinary Needles National Park campground has a small loop of first-come-first-served sites. We were lucky enough to get one last year, but it’s primarily kismet.
The drive took us through (you guessed it) Moab, where we grabbed gas, ice, coffee and muffins and kept on moving. We had a hilariously broken conversation with some friends over intermittent cellular across the desert plains, before eventually taking a right toward Needles. The drop (in elevation) into needles is spectacular, aside from the bovine road kill from open grazing. We saw two fatalities on this trip in, have seen a few on other visits, and it reminds us of unfortunate moose back home.
We arrived at Loop A a few minutes before ten and found four empty sites. Win. Of the four, three were perfectly acceptable and one was the obvious winner in the back of the loop. We chatted for a moment with our very welcoming new neighbors, and then left the Toyota packed for a hike while the heat was still reasonable. We love hiking here.
One hike and a little leisure later, in the early evening we hit the Needles Visitor Center for some internet and a couple of phone calls. We returned to camp to end the day with some more pre-prepared home cooking and low impact downloaded entertainment, a little exhausted but very happy.

Where we slept last night.