Canyonlands was the surprise find on our adventure. It's SO pretty, but with all the big Canyons nearby - Bryce & the Grand Canyon specifically, this park gets totally overlooked. My regret is not being here either early in the morning, or later in the afternoon near sunset to watch all the canyons pop full of their color and capture photos. The rocks even in midday while we were there had a purple hue to them, which makes them rather interesting and unique. This park is the result of the Green & Colorado Rivers working their magic carving canyons over time.
This website: The Mighty 5 helped me so much with trip planning, distances, what to do, where to go, and timing which was so important for us. The page I have directly linked to, shows how to do all of Utah's 5 National Parks in a week! Amazing!
Important Note: Water! Same issue as with Arches, plan ahead, you can't find it in the park here either!
Surprises: We didn't realize there were two sides to this park that are entirely separate. We went into the North side, which is the Island in the Sky side. Great name! (Does that name make anyone else think of the Zelda games? H & I had a good discussion about that, but I digress). The way in to the other side is down near Needles. The convenience with the Island in the Sky side is that it's only about 30-40 miles from Arches, whereas you'd have to go over 70 mi to get to the other entrance... the other interesting surprise were the amount of bike trails that we could see wrapping around down in the canyons. If you love your bike, this is the place for you. I was also surprised at how much sand is at the top of the canyons. H of course from his college days, will tell you all about sandstone and such, and since he knows rock types well from his sculpting classes, he wasn't at all surprised.
Buck Canyon Overlook
Grand View Point Overlook
A final thought: we all love our handy dandy technology goodies, but trying to get a GPS from here to Salt Lake took over two hours. We were halfway to Provo before that signal finally came through. I'm so glad we went to AAA and got a couple of regular maps. H is great, he does all the driving and trusts me to navigate us wherever we need to get to. I love maps! My dad taught me to love them at a young age. It was that or him having to endure the 2 questions every parent hates on a long car ride, "Are we there yet"? or "How much longer"? Yep! I was that kid! In fact, I got my maps with my dad after work one day the week before we left. Thanks dad!
No comments:
Post a Comment