Moonflower Canyon and the Matheson Wetlands Preserve

We had a couple of hours of daylight left when we got to Moab on Nov. 30, so we wanted to get out and do a quick hike after spending the day up to that point sitting in the car.

We started with Moonflower Canyon.  It's not spectacular but is pleasant enough, it seems to be a short hike that locals do with their dogs:

The sun was getting low so it wasn't a very photogenic canyon.  The 1 km (maybe shorter) trail ends at this pool of water that collects under the cliffs:

Ed pretends to take a dive off of the boulders that have fallen from the cliffs:

Near the trailhead there are some petroglyphs that might go back as far as 2000 years:

There is also some graffiti mixed in that goes back just over 100 years:

It was such a short trail that we still had some time left, so on the drive back to town we stopped at the Scott M. Matheson Wetlands Preserve Trail:

It wasn't too wet at this time of year, but here is Ed on a boardwalk:

This is the Colorado River:

We saw some wildlife, a couple of deer, one of whom is visible below.

These two hikes weren't super exciting, but they fulfilled their purpose of getting us out and moving before the sun went down.  The good stuff starts tomorrow.