11/4-5 Saturday, we headed north on our loop through the towns of Blanding and Monticello before a brief stop at Newspaper Rock and an early afternoon arrival in the southern part of Canyonlands National Park, an area known as the Needles district for its unique rock spires. Again, we stopped at many viewpoints along the way and hiked through incredible wind along an overlook trail before making our way to Moab for the final two nights of our journey.

Our last full day in Utah, we added one more park, Arches National Park, as well as the northern section of Canyonlands, the Island in the Sky district. We had an early start on the day for a quick visit to Arches—the only part of this journey which we had previously experienced, a brief detour about 30 years ago—where we walked to several arch overlooks as well as to the base of the North Window arch. Then we were off to the Island in the Sky, a very different park of Canyonlands from the Needles. We drove and hiked along the spine of a large mesa, visiting Mesa Arch, Whale Rock, Upheaval Dome, and walking several miles of slick rock to Grand View point. We ended the last day of our quick Utah adventure on a bluff over the Green River, watching the sunset.