Hiking to Druid Arch and Chesler Park at Canyonlands National Park (Needles District)

A few days ago we explored Canyonlands for the first time in the Island in the Sky District. After a couple days hiking around Arches National Park, we've headed one and a half hours south to the Needles District of Canyonlands. The Needles District gets its name from the colorful spires of Cedar Mesa Sandstone. And while it is the second most visited area of the park, it still gets a lot less visitors than Island in the Sky due to its more remote location. Unlike the Island in the Sky District, which is mostly overlooks and really short hikes, the Needles District is home to several longer hikes. And our original plan, slash still kind of our current plan, was to hike to Druid Arch and Chesler Park, which are two of the more iconic areas in this area of the park. But when we arrived at the road to turn off to Elephant Hill, which is the trailhead we were going to start at, we saw a sign that said vehicles over 21 feet are not allowed. And we're 22 feet, 22 and a half feet. So we're sure we could have made it, but we're rule followers, so we weren't going to break the rule. So we had to get all the maps out and figure out a new way to get there. And we're now starting from the Squaw Flat Campground Loop A trailhead. So we think it'll be instead of like 11.2 miles, it might be closer to 15. It's going to be a lot longer of a day, but we really want to do these hikes. So we have a lot of snacks. We have a lot water. It's going to be fun. Even more scenery. Yeah. This trail is really cool so far. It has some interesting kind of climbing experiences. And so far we haven't seen another person at all. We're only about 2.4 miles into the hike, but the views the entire way have just been incredible. We're 99% sure that these are the needles back here, which is what the district is named after. And so far the trail's been really easy to follow. They have a bunch of those rock towers, the cairns that kind of lead the way. There isn't a ton of actual trail markers, but the cairns are placed really close together. So we haven't gotten lost so far. And you're hiking a lot on this rock. I think it's sandstone and it's really grippy. So it's really dry out. So thankfully, because if it was wet, it might be slippery, but so far it's been really easy to climb up and down. There's been some cool little tunnels and caves and rocks to climb over. It's just been so fun so far. Didn't start out exactly how we thought it would, but we're loving Plan B. The scenery in this district is different than the Island in the Sky district. So it feels like you get multiple national parks in one. Over there you had the big giant canyons. Here you have these needles and giant canyons. This trail is just full of fun surprises. So the trail has switched from being more of climbing on rocks to being down kind of in a wash, surrounded by all of these awesome rocks. And we are slowly inching closer to our first stop, which is Druid Arch. This is where we started and we've gone all the way down here, all the way over here, and this is where we are. And that is where Druid Arch is. I read that it gets a little more strenuous towards the end of the trail. We're definitely not in the wash anymore. No. That was hard. I really struggled with that to be honest. I almost gave up. It's like a really slick, steep wall with not a ton of footholds and a lot of sand on it. So I kept sliding. Had to slide down on my butt. Had to try like three different routes. Pretty sure I said a lot of bad words, but I made it up. Oh, I think we're almost there. I hope we're almost there. Apparently we've got a little bit more of a scamper up some rocks here. It's like two arches in one. Cool, huh? Yeah, really cool. Worth it. For sure. This view back here is insane. The needles, they are so crazy. This feels kind of like we're at Star Wars Galaxy Edge at Disney World. I don't know why. I just, it gives me a similar vibe, but it's real life. This view here, you can see how I guess whatever water just kind of really carved it out, zigzag through. That's amazing. This is, we're not, we're like halfway done with this 15 mile hike, but this is so far probably my top three favorite hiking experiences at the national parks in Utah. We'll narrow the pool a little. Now for my favorite part again. I did it. It was way easier going down. Seems like it's kind of a connector trail to Chesler Park. Very rugged, lots of scrambling, not much flat area to walk on. This thing is crazy. Not totally sure, but we think this is Chesler Park. Either way. We just made it back onto the trail that'll take us back to the van. It's the one that we started on earlier. That's slightly different than what most people will do, but we're so glad that this park has just a web of trails that all intermix. There's a lot of different ways you can go, which means you really need to be careful on where you're going, but without that we wouldn't have been able to do this hike today. So we're so glad even though it has taken way longer than we thought it would. The hike was a real blast though. The entire way there are zero boring parts. You have something incredible off in the distance or close to you the entire way. It's very immersive. You're right up close to the needles and you just get all up in the middle of them. So we're really thankful that we got to do this hike. We've got a few miles to go back to the van. We're already pooped, but we're gonna book it back there now. According to all trails, we did 17.3 miles in about 8 hours 41 minutes. We started out thinking we were doing 11 today, which don't let our mileage scare you. If you're gonna come do this hike and you have a normal car, you can definitely do the 11 mile loop, not the 17 mile loop. Then we thought we were doing 15, but it ended up being 17.3. This is by far, I think it's the longest day hike we have ever done, but even though we are so tired now, it was definitely worth it. We've got one more stop in the Canyonlands Needles District and it's a quick and easy hike called the Cave Spring Loop Trail. So the whole reason we wanted to make this stop was because of this cowboy camp. So back in the 1800s there were pioneer cattlemen in the park who ran a successful cattle business all the way until the 1970s and now there's just a bunch of, looks like artifacts, desks and cabinets left from the cattlemen here in this cave. So the reason cowboys chose this area to have a camp was because of this spring here. So both cowboys and Native Americans use this area because of this reliable water source. There's also evidence of Native Americans using this area because of the blackened ceilings from smoke, which implies that they were using this area to keep warm and to make food. There are also pictographs from the Native Americans. There's a few of them right here, all kind of an orange rusty color. And then what I think is so crazy is that there are handprints on the walls from the Native Americans. At first we weren't sure if those are from Native Americans or from someone like, you know, a year ago, but on the sign it says handprints and drawings from them. I just think that is wild that it's still here. So this is a fun feature of this trail that we did not know about till we got here. Apparently there are two wooden ladders you have to climb up. We had read that the cowboys in the cowboy camp cooked with the dutch oven, so tonight we're going to follow in their footsteps, do some dutch oven cooking. And we are going to be making green chili chicken enchiladas. So we're cheating a bit and we bought some pre-cooked shredded chicken just to make our lives easier and after that hike I'm very glad that we were looking out for our future selves at the grocery store. So I'm kind of just winging this recipe to be honest. I haven't made enchiladas in a super long time but this is gonna be delicious. Some of the shredded chicken in the bowl and I'm just gonna put a ton of cheese in there and put in some of this enchilada sauce just to kind of give it some more flavor. Kind of a gross noise but I'm mixing it up. So we thought it might be a good idea and it may be a horrible idea to put some of the enchilada sauce on the bottom of the dutch oven just so there's some liquid and maybe things won't stick hopefully. Alright then I'm gonna pour more enchilada sauce on top. I hope this doesn't mess it up. And then I'm gonna sprinkle more cheese on top. If you remember the first time and the last time we cooked with the dutch oven we made cornbread in it and the bottom of the crust was basically a oreo cookie crust because it was so burnt because we just used a bunch of coals on the bottom. So a lot of you sent us a chart giving us how many coals to use for a certain temperature to control that. So we're gonna take a bit more of a scientific approach this time. While we wait for our charcoal to be ready, we have a little chips and salsa appetizer. We've been excited about this for about nine hours now. This looks like pretty good salsa. This sasso salsa, I didn't realize it when we bought it, that was fire roasted. It is absolutely delicious. For our size dutch oven which is a 10 inch and we want 325 degrees, you need six coals on the bottom and 13 on top. That's the best tool we have. Yeah this is a spatula I don't care about. I realized the coals that I put on there aren't grayed over so they might not be super hot but we're getting hungry so we wanted to get it going. It's taking a lot longer than expected. We're going on 30 minutes now. It's like watching paint dry kind of. So we ended up just adding more coals just to try to get it going faster. They look cheesy, they look gooey, and best of all they did not burn. We did it! We finally made something in the dutch oven or even the campfire recipe that we didn't mess up. They look so good. We made some black beans to go with it. Oh yeah. It might be like really soft but that's okay. Yeah those are bomb. So cheesy. Restaurant quality. Super cheesy as we said. The tortilla is awesome. The enchilada sauce in there mixing it in and inside makes it even better. All the flavors meld together. It's a little spicy. The green chilies you can taste. Yes I'm so happy we did it. We really enjoyed our time in the Needles district today. It's just an amazing place especially if you love hiking like we do. Some of the best spots require quite a bit of a trek out there but the scenery just entirely is just so crazy. We're a little bit sad though because this is the end of our Utah national park adventures. However tomorrow we're going to be heading to go pick up Kona because she's been boarded for a few days while we explored the Moab area national parks and then we'll be heading back to Moab for one final Utah adventure and we're going to show you guys some things to do in the area that are not national parks and dog friendly. You're so slow. She's hurting. We're on on empty now.