The Edge of the Cedars State Park Museum is the best place to start any exploration of the Ancestral Puebloan archaeology around Blanding, and one of the finest small museums in the American Southwest. The collection of ceramics, baskets, jewellery, and artefacts recovered from the canyons and mesas of southeastern Utah is exceptional — not just in its size but in the care of the curation, which places objects in cultural context rather than treating them as curiosities.
The museum sits on an actual archaeological site: behind the building is a partially excavated Ancestral Puebloan village dating to around 1000 CE, including a great kiva that has been restored and is open to walk through. The combination of indoor interpretation and outdoor site is unusually satisfying. Allow at least two hours. The staff are knowledgeable and the gift shop sells serious books on the archaeology of the region, which is more useful than it sounds: the canyons around Cedar Mesa are complex, and good background reading makes a day in Grand Gulch considerably more rewarding.