State Parks

Anasazi State Park Museum (UT) is Utah's park dedicated to the Anasazi, who disappeared as a culture some thousand years ago. Too be honest, the ruins are much like those at the other major Anasazi sites, but most of those have been co-opted by the federal government.

It is, however, a nice place to get out and stretch your legs, use the bathroom, get something out of the cooler...

If you like lighthouses, Cape Disappointment State Park has two of 'em. The original lighthouse on Cape Disappointment, and it's replacement, the North Head Lighthouse.

It's also the overlook that the Corp of Discovery camped at, hoping to flag down a passing ship. Lewis and Clark didn't name it, but they were disappointed. An interpretive center overlooks the lighthouse. I also have an image of the sign where Station Camp was located on the Pacific Coast.

Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park isn't that far off US-89 between Zion and Glen Canyon.

Should you choose to stop there, you'll find a very, very fine, pink sand, eroded from the neighboring cliffs and shaped by the wind into large dunes. Should you choose to walk into the dune field, you'll find your shoelaces pink, your socks pink, with sand between your toes, and will track inside your car and follow you around for days...

Custer State Park is my favorite state park, located right in the middle of the Black Hills.

It is a large and scenic park with accessible wildlife on one end and mountain roads on the other. One of the attractions to this park, is the close proximity of Mount Rushmore to the North and Wind Cave National Park to the South, in addition to all the other things to see and do in the area.

Dead Horse Point State Park is right next door to Canyonlands National Park, about a half-mile as the crow flies, or about 11 miles by road. That's just the way things are out here.

From the top, you get a magnificent view of the Colorado River Valley and the goosenecks just before entering Canyonlands. Unfortunately, the main view is to the South, so the sun will always be in front of you.

I actually used the "cabins" (more like townhomes) in Edgar Evins State Park as a hotel when doing some stuff for Jenny during my Peaceful Pastures Farm Trip. These are mostly cabin interiors, plus a tale of my first introduction to the place.

These images live on the Peaceful Pastures page.

Garden of the Gods is a city park in Colorado Springs.

This first surprised me, but after some thought, most cities have city parks. Just not ones with sandstone fins that jut out perpendicular to the ground with Pikes Peak as the background. Where I live, I get squirrels and some trees.

Goblin Valley State Park is a very unusual place that has thousands of relatively small stone monuments that the guy who discovered the place called "Goblins". I thought they looked more like mushrooms. Jo thought they look more like... poops.

It's only a few miles off of US-24 from I-70, on the way to Capitol Reef and Torrey, the start of Utah-12. It's worth the stop. Just be aware you'll be in the very definition of "Middle of Nowhere".

Kodachrome Basin is another one of those amazingly scenic Utah State Parks, just a short detour off of Utah-12.

The basin was actually named by National Geographic after the new (in 1949) fine grained transparency film from Kodak. When Utah created the state park, the Kodak gave them permission to retain the name. Fast forward almost 70 years, and not only is film an almost dead medium, but there isn't a processing plant left that can actually develop a roll of Kodachrome.

Dinosaur fossils have been unearthed here, from Triceratops to Tyrannosaurus Rex.

They've built some other attractions on site, so the experience is more than just watching falling water if you so desire. Since I needed a stop for the night in the near vicinity, a stop to see the falls was a no-brainer.