Canyonlands National Park
From our base camp in Moab we visited Arches (see prior post) and Canyonlands National Parks. These are VERY different from each other, so don’t just go to one! Canyonlands is split into 3 sections: Island in the Sky, Needles, and the Maze. We visited the first 2 because the Maze is difficult to get to and doesn’t have any paved roads- it’s really more of a backpacking area. Additionally, even though the 3 sections are all part of the same park and are adjacent to each other, you cannot drive through one to get to another section- you must leave the park, drive a good distance (about 60 miles) and enter into the other section.
We started in the Island in the Sky section, which is named that because you drive over a narrow “bridge” of land (40 feet wide) to get to the main area of the park. There are lots of overlooks along the scenic drive.
Canyonlands is HUGE and seems to go on forever:
In this park you take the scenic drive and look out over the amazing canyons.
They seem to go on forever! You also see the Green River here and there, as well as some hoodoos:
We hiked to Mesa Arch:
depending on where you stand, you get a different view through the arch-the mesas in the left picture and the La Sal mountains, which are about 35 miles away, in the right.
We also visited the Needles section of Canyonlands, although it was a few days later, after we had moved to the small town of Blanding. Newspaper Rock is the first main attraction in the Needles, and you can see why:
There are lots of images for people, animals, shields and maps (according to a guide I purchased to try to understand what we were looking at). These images are about 1100 years old!
We took the drive through the Needles section and saw The Wooden Shoe Arch:
The information about how it was formed is interesting- see, you learn things here!
We also saw this butte in the distance:
Canyonlands is definitely worth a visit- it just seems to go on forever!
Throughout the various parks you can see the different layers in the rock, and there are resources to tell you about them. We listened to Gypsy and got some info, and there was a sign in one of the parks to illustrate the geology- it truly is amazing:
