While in the “Needles” area we hiked to a couple of interesting places. One is called the Upheaval Dome, which is a huge round depression in the rocky hillside with a large white rock dome in the center. Scientists aren’t totally sure how this round depression formed, but the most accepted theory is a meteor strike. The large white dome in the center is apparently salt. It certainly looks like a meteor depression when we got to the rim and looked down into it.

Another hike we took walked around some large rock formations where the base has washed away from floodwaters, so the rocks have a mushroom effect. We walked under the sides of many of these rocks…it was a little scary to think that the rocks could fall on you…but apparently there hasn’t been a rockfall in a very long time.

Under one of these mushroom rocks is a spring that comes out through the rock. It flows all year long, so there’s a long history of people living in this area. We say some rock walls that were painted by people approx. 1,000 years ago, and also a cowboy camp under a nearby mushroom rock where cowboys had brought in a stove, cupboards, a rail to tie their horses, and a few other items to make the area as comfortable as possible. It sure beat sleeping out in the open with no water!

When we left the Canyonlands park we drove to a nearby state park called the Dead Horse Point State Park. We learned that it’s called Dead Horse because the shape of this mesa, up above the deep river canyons, has a ‘neck’ that’s only 30 years wide leading to a larger mesa end. Cowboys would herd wild horses through this neck onto the mesa end and then block the neck with dead trees making a pen to hold the horses till they could catch them. One time, however, the horses got left there and they all died of thirst, while able to look down the steep canyon walls to the river 2,000 feet below! Awful! The second reason this park is called Dead Horse is that if you stand at the end of the mesa looking down to the river and canyons far below, there’s a whitish rock formation that looks like a horse!

Here are pictures we took of the Cave Springs, the Upheaval Dome and the Dead Horse Point State Park:

The Canyonlands National Park has three areas that you can drive to in order to see the canyons, rivers and formations of rocks, some small and some large. One area is the Island in the Sky, described in my earlier entry. Another area is called “The Needles” based on a length of cliff that has been eroded into many narrow pointed formations that look like needles. We visited this area one day and to get to it you drive through many very steep narrow canyons to get the large mesa that has river views.

Here are pictures we took of the mesas, buttes and rock formations that are visible from “The Needles”:

We visited the Canyonlands National Park which is near Moab. I didn’t really know a lot about this national park before we came. It’s a large area consisting of vast canyons with the Green River and the Colorado River at the bottom with a large high mesa between the two rivers. This large mesa is called “Island in the Sky” and it really did seem like it…it’s so much higher than the surrounding canyon landscapes that you are looking down on birds soaring through the sky.

The Green and Colorado Rivers are both large rivers, and they join together near the south end of the park. Most of the canyon areas as accessible only by 4×4 vehicles and long strenuous hikes, so we stayed up on the mesas to get views of the canyons.

Those views were fantastic! I think they rival the Grand Canyon in beauty and diversity. Looking west from the Island in the Sky you can see down to a lower mesa and to the numerous canyons carved through it. The Green River meanders through the area with lots of hairpin turns and the number of carved canyons is just amazing!

Looking east from the Island in the Sky you can similar canyons and hairpin turns of the Colorado River. One thing that impressed me is how green both of the rivers are. There are lots of rock formations down in the Colorado River hairpin turns and lots of colored bands in the rock canyons. Just beautiful!

Here are pictures we took of the canyon and river views: