The needles
 

Next month we will driving from monument valley to Moab and want to take a detour to view the needles. I see on the map that there are two roads , one to the needles campgrounds and park visitor centre, the other to the needles overlook. Which road should I take for the best views?

Needles overlook has a view, but that's it. The Needles visitor center/campground area has all the trailheads, hikes, short nature trails, 4WD roads, etc. The hiking is amazing there, and it's lightly visited compared to Canyonlands nearer to Moab.

Thanks Christy1

We visited both the overlook and the Park itself a couple of years ago. If you are going to just drive in and see the views from the road, you might consider just visiting the overlook. It would save you a lot of time and the views are stupendous.

If you are going in to camp and hike the trails, then that's another matter and you should drive into the Park and spend some time there.

Will you be camping? There's a fine BLM campground on the way to the overlook. We liked it better than the campground in the Needles proper.

The ride into the needles is scenic and if you are interested in Native American history there is newspaper rock, covered with petroglyphs on the way in and in the park there are pictographs also in the spring cave area, as well as a stone that was used for grinding. There are also the remains of a cowboy camp in the area. I have a couple of pictures of them at www.flickr.com/photos/emalloy2009/sets in the 2009 set and some other pictures from Island in the sky in the 2010 set.

This is a fantastic place to explore.