Candlestick Tower overlook
A gorgeous day, and far too many pictures was the result! We drove to Canyonlands National Park, the Islands in the Sky division, which is just south of us and spent the day driving to viewpoints and hiking short hikes to vantage points to see the canyons.
The canyons were breathtakingly beautiful today, all shades of reds and browns, with the most distant views tinted blue from the very light atmospheric haze. Their scale is immense, and you are high above the canyon floor 1600 feet below you. And that is not the bottom, for that canyon floor is cut by even more canyons dropping hundreds of feet more.
We started the morning at Mesa Arch. It isn’t a difficult hike, but it does climb uphill over a good deal of slickrock, sand, and many stone steps. A man and a woman were wheeling a young man of about thirty, probably their son, in a lightweight “wheelchair”, built much like a racing wheelchair, but built for rugged duty use. We passed them at some of the stairs, where they were resting. I offered to help, but they declined, and they made it to the top not long after that.
White Rim Overlook trail
We drove on to Grand View point which is the end of the road, and walked another mile out to the very end. The view is spectacular, and immense, with canyons dropping off hundreds of feet below on all sides as far into the distance as one can see.
After lunch we continued on exploring the canyon views. Our day ended at the upheaval dome, a 1500 foot deep “crater”, possibly formed by a meteorite impact.
Tonight it took a very long time to go through all the pictures I took today. There are so many different views of the canyons from differing angles that it will take me a while to decide which are the ones I really like.