Canyonlands National Park

Monday, Sept. 27.  Happy Birthday, Dixie.

This morning we headed out to Canyonlands National Park, to the Island in the Sky section, the entrance is just a few miles north of Moab.  The park is actually about 23 miles back this highway.  Our first stop was at the Monitor and Merrimac buttes.





 The layers of rock are fascinating.  It looks like just one sheet after another was layered on top of the next.

We stopped at the Visitor Center and listened to a brief talk about the history of this region by a real cute park ranger gal.  We stopped at the Shafer Canyon Overlook, and you could see the road through this canyon that the ranchers used to move cattle.  Joe, of course, wants to drive this very narrow, steep, windy, switchback, no-guard-rail road, but I think I have got him talked out of it this trip, because the tires on the Explorer are getting pretty thin and this road is no place for a flat tire. 

 I volunteered his sister, Dixie, to accompany him on it sometime, especially since today is her birthday, and she just "loves" these kinds of trips  with her adoring brother.  We'll see if that happens sometime in the future.
There are a few arches in this park too, and this Mesa Arch has a beautiful view through its window.  This was a short hike, about a half-mile, but it is warming up.  Of course the picture is really enhanced with me in the window!

Our next hike was more strenuous, to the Upheaval Dome.  The path was marked with cairns along the way (we just learned that's what these little stacks of rock are called).

At one spot, Joe said, "they put this one right in the middle of the trail" and he stepped right over it. Me, being the expert hiker that I am, saw that the real trail turned right here and he was actually going off-trail, so I quickly straightened him out.  This was about a mile hike and it was a little steep in places (although it had good steps) and it was hot out by now.  This gave us our aerobic exercise for the day.

 At the Green  River Overlook, we could see the Green River windy its way through the canyons.
At the end of the road was the Grand View Point, and it was grand.  Beyond this point is the confluence of the Colorado and Green Rivers but the water was hidden from view by the deep canyons.  But the view was terrific.

Right in the middle of this last picture is a formation called a "totem," so Mazie, this one is for you.  There are spires behind it, but this one stands alone.

Our last event of the day was a "Lights and Sound" boat trip up the Colorado River, preceded by a cowboy dinner.  The river was laying like glass and you hardly realized you were even on a boat.  The boat was set up like a barge with rows of chairs, and it was completely open.  Our narrator was an old cowboy who pointed out rock formations that resembled faces or animals, and he told us some of the history of the region.  Once it got dark, the boat was turned around and there was a truck on the highway along the river that lit up the rock walls very dramatically and a tape played with the history of the formation of the canyon.  The sky was dotted with flickering stars and we could see the Milky Way.  It was a nice presentation and a nice end to this part of our trip.