Friday June 13, 2014


Non-Travel Day


Today we headed 37 miles north to the "Canyonlands National Park", “Islands in the Sky District” . This is an area of the park that is a large high mesa that looks out over a tremendous vista of canyons and distant mountains. After leaving the visitors center we took a short walk across the parking lot to the first overlook of the day. Our next stop was at the “Mesa Arch”, after an uphill hike we came to the stone arch on the edge of a drop off into the canyon below, it was a beautiful natural sculpture. While there the wind picked up blowing sand along, we were witness to the force of nature that would sculpt the rock with the blowing sand. The “Upheaval Dome” was our next stop, and after a ½ mile hike uphill we reached the spectacular vista overlooking a depression in the land with geological formations that the geologists cannot explain. The colors in the rocks and the formations were wonderful. We stopped next at the Green River Overlook for a short hike to wonderful views of the canyon spread out before us. The “Grand View Point Overlook” was our last major stop with a ½ mile hike over the slick rock path to the overlook of the canyons created by the Colorado and Green Rivers. The Canyonlands National Park was established as a National Park in 1964 , and as a young park there are still signs of the previous use of the land by the ranchers and mining companies. We thoroughly enjoyed our visit to the park today.