4 Best Sights in Blanding, Moab and Southeastern Utah

Behind what is one of the nation's foremost museums dedicated to the Ancestral Puebloan culture, an interpretive trail leads to a village that they once inhabited. Portions have been partially excavated, and visitors can climb down a ladder into a 1,000-year-old ceremonial room called a kiva. The museum displays a variety of pots, baskets, spear points, and other rare artifacts. There's even a sash made from the colorful feathers of a scarlet macaw, a bird native to Mexico or Central America, which proves the vast distances indigenous trade routes spanned. 

The best place in southeast Utah to see ancient tower ruins dotting the scenic cliffs, if you're headed south from Canyonlands and have an interest in Ancestral Puebloan culture, a visit to this monument is a must. Park rangers strongly advise following printed maps and signs from U.S. 191 near Blanding, Utah, or County Road G from Cortez, Colorado; GPS is not reliable here. Once you arrive, you'll find unusual tower structures (which may have been used for astronomical observation) and ancient dwellings.

One of the West's most famous rock-art sites, about 15 miles west of U.S. 191, this site contains Native American designs engraved on the rock over the course of 2,000 years. Early pioneers and explorers to the region named the site Newspaper Rock because they believed the rock, crowded with drawings, constituted a written language with which early people communicated. Archaeologists now agree that the petroglyphs do not represent language.

Life-size dino replicas in dramatic poses will delight kids. The small museum also features many skeletons, fossils, and footprints—and reportedly the world's largest collection of movie posters starring Godzilla and other monsters dating back to the early days of film.