Dead Horse State Park and Canyonlands National Park

Cayonlands had a few arches too. Slightly better view though.

November 25th, 2013

I woke up just after the sun rose to explore new territory. Unlike the last stop, I was completely unfamiliar with Cayonlands. I hadn't even heard of it until I saw a sign on my way to Arches. After a little research I also learned about Dead Horse Point, which was on the way to the park.

Dead Horse Point overlooks an area used to trap horses to be used as new mounts. It is an outcropping of rock that has a cliff on 3 sides with the Colorado River at the bottom. Riders could chase the horses out onto the rock, close the gate, and have their pick of the horses. On their way out, they would open the gate and let the horses out. Well, they forgot the second step once and the horses became trapped and died; thus the name.

It is supposed to have fantastic views, so I was a little disappointed when I got there and saw this:

Stupid cloud. And this was taken in a "clear" patch.

There were clouds hanging out in the valley! The whole way there I followed blue skies and the clouds picked the valley as their hangout. I was a little disappointed, but decided to wait it out for an hour to see if it cleared up at all. I pulled out my knife and worked on my walking stick for a bit, wandered around some other paths to snap some of the other photo sites.

So close to clear!

I finally called it and decided I would stop again on my way back to town. Maybe the mid-day sun would burn off the clouds.

Looks like I made the correct choice!

Canyonlands is a HUGE park. A quarter of a million square miles huge. I explored the Island in the Sky district of the park. I am not even sure about how you reach the other districts in the park because the road sort of ends. There are 4 wheel drive roads, which must be how you get around off the main road.

The views here are simply stunning. This is by far one of the coolest places I have visited on the trip.

Love the mountains in the distance.

There are a lot of hikes that take you down into the canyon. I never took any because most of the trails were covered with snow, and I was pretty sore from all the walking at Arches. I did hike the Grand View Point Overlook trail. It was super cool because you could look out over the clouds in the valley.

Welcome to the edge of the world.

Almost looks solid

View from the end of the trail

I also hiked out to Upheaval Dome. This is a pretty cool geological oddity that has a dome surrounded by a crater. There were a few theories as to how it formed including a meteorite impact and a collapsed salt dome. I don't think they ever spelled out what it was on the trail.

After Upheaval Dome, I was done hiking for the day. I made my way back to Dead Horse Point. I was lucky because the sun was setting and it changed the rock to a brilliant red color. If you can, spend sunset at Dead Horse. You won't be disappointed.

The setting sun really brings out the colors in the rock. (Still Canyonlands)

Dead Horse.

If I had a decent camera, I would take shots of this every second until sunset. The colors were much more vivid in person.

After the sun set, I made my way back to Moab for the night. New destinations awaited early the next morning.

Click here for more pictures of Dead Horse and Canyonlands

Arches National Park

November 24th, 2013

I woke up early and made my way down to Arches. It is a little bit weird driving a road in winter that you had driven only driven in the summer. Things look so familiar and yet so different. This morning was very jarring because the last time I was here it was 90 degrees in the shade.

I went right into the park (nearly empty this time around) and stopped to take a picture of the one hike Quinn and I did when we were last here. Not nearly as much vegetation or wildlife; not that there was much to begin with. I was also dealing with overcast skies and some fog.

Summer

Winter

I proceed further into the park to check out some of the other hikes and sights. There were a lot of balancing rocks. As you can probably imagine, these are pretty rare formations like the arches. Different layers of rock erode at different speeds. In a pillar, this can form a balancing rock. In a sheet, this can form an arch.

Click to get a bigger picture. See the "tree"?

Another cool formation was the "Sea of Sand". It is a lot easier to see in the summer without the snow cover, but there was an exposed section for the picture below. This was formed by a sand dune being compressed into rock. It covers a large expanse of the park and is really thick in some areas. It really makes you focus on how much time has passed since these rocks were formed.

The "main attraction" of the park, also its namesake, is of course the arches. Of which there were plenty. There were a lot of really short .3-.5 mile hikes to reach these giants.

One shelf can have multiple arches.

The black staining is either a chemical reaction or bacterial/fungal growth on the rock.

You can see the arch slowly growing as more of the rock cracks and breaks off.

This is a rare formation where the center of the shelf eroded and left an arch on either side of the shelf.

The next hike I picked was a bit longer and much more strenuous. The path was muddy, you walked up a giant tilted slab of rock, and there were sections where you were pretty close to the edge. The sights along the way and at the top were well worth the effort.

Preserved drawings. I can't remember how old they were.

I could sit here and relax for hours if the rock didn't suck all the heat from your body in a matter of minutes.

I wandered back to my car and made lunch. By "made lunch" I mean I ate chili from a can, cold, with some leftover rolls from the other day. As bad as that sounds it was rather filling and gave me a second wind for more hiking.

The next area I stopped at you can't hike through unless you get a permit or hike with a ranger. The hike itself is a full on maze, so if you are unprepared you can easily get lost. It is called the Fiery Furnace after the way the rocks appear brilliantly red in the sunset. Even with little sun, the rocks still looked amazing. It is on my list for next time.

I got in a few more short hikes before calling it a day. It had been a while since I had hiked this much in a single day and my body was starting to wear out. There were about 4-5 more arches that I didn't get to in my visit.

Not all arches have to be huge.

I think this one was called broken arch, since it has a crack in the middle.

This arch "recently" (within the last 100 years) got larger as a huge section of rock fell from the upper left hand side.

I wandered down to Moab for dinner and sleep. I stopped at the Moab brewing company for wings and beer. Other than the fact that they didn't have a beer flight to sample all their brews, it was alright. After a long day of hiking I crashed for the night.

Entrance to the park. The section of rock high on the left is the same rock that Arches is made from. The fault that runs through Moab dropped the arches side, creating all the formations.

Click here for more pictures of Arches.