Canyonlands National Park, Utah
Canyonlands National Park, Utah
Canyonlands National Park is a vast 337,598 acres of colorful canyons, mesas, buttes, fins, arches, and spires, located in the heart of southeast Utah's high desert.
The park is easily accessible from Moab, where you will find good accommodations and food.
Unlike visiting a large grand canyon, here you will see at every turn, many large and deep canyons stretching far beyond what the eye can see.
Rain, wind and gravity have been the prime architects of this land, sculpting layers of rock into the rugged landscape that you see today.
Canyonlands came under government protection only recently.
Before that, cattle ranchers used it as grazing land, and in the 1950’s, uranium miners used it to prospect for Uranium.
Luckily, not much uranium was found in the area.
Legislation was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on September 12, 1964, which designated Canyonlands as a national park.
The park is divided into four huge districts: “The Island in the Sky,” “The Needles,” “The Maze,” and “The Rivers.”
The two main rivers that flow through the Park are the Green river and the Colorado river, which carved two of the largest canyons into the Colorado Plateau.
We only had time to tour the Island In The Sky region.
It took a full day, and we only had time to do some of the shorter hikes.
In the future when we come again, we will plan for full day hikes.
To get to the Island In The Sky, we drove about 25 miles through a primitive desert atmosphere, that is filled with tall grass, native pinion trees, wild herbs and amazing rock formations.
The Island In The Sky is indeed an island, surrounded with very deep canyons, that is only accessible by a narrow road called “The Neck.”
After you cross The Neck, you are on a vast island, and while you will not be able to always see the canyon boundaries, there are lots of viewing points to see the vast canyons.
If you plan on a visit, I highly recommend downloading the app “GyPSy for Canyonlands and Arches National Parks.”
The app will guide you through the park, automatically playing stories and geological facts, as you reach points of interest.
We spent a quiet and very interesting day exploring the park and getting to know the history of the region for our future hikes in the area.
With love and light,
Tali
