Canyonlands and Arches National Parks

Capitol Reef - Gibson House

Canyonlands

 We camped in Moab, UT because we knew that there were two National Parks within 35 miles of our campground.  Our neighbors in the next campsite told us about Dead Horse Point State Park as well.   Sooooo, we set out the first day for Dead Horse Point State Park as it was on our way to  Canyonlands.   The story is that a group of cowboys corralled a herd of wild horses at the highest point in the area, chose the horses they wanted, and then left the rest to die with no water or food and no way to get feed.   Hence the name of the park.   Actually it has a view from that point that can see mountains 100 miles away!   From there we headed to Canyonlands National Park, just up the road a few miles.   

Canyonlands has three areas -- the one easiest to reach is the Islands in the Sky area where the majority of people visit the cliffs and overlooks.   The Green river and the Colorado river join within the park.   At that point white water rafters enjoy a wild ride.    The second area is called Needles, and is an area of pinacles and hoodoos.   Only hikers and those with jeeps or quads can go into that area, as there are no paved roads.   The third area is called the Maze, and only primitive hikers  and 4-wheel drive vehicles with permits may travel into that area of the park.    Islands in the sky is a broad mesa wedged between the Green and Colorado rivers and it acts as an observation tower to look into the canyons below.   The area is arid - - it gets only 10 inches of rain a year. 

Between Canyonlands and Arches, I enjoyed the latter much more.   Perhaps it was because there were well marked trails to the various arches that were fairly easy to travel.   We hiked to several arches - the windows arch trail was 1 mile, and had the added bonus of actually having three arches to view.   We also hiked to the sand dune arch - an easy .3 mile hike with lots of sand to hike through!   AJ would have loved to play in it!!!    Skyline arch (shown below) was a 0.4 mile hike and our favorite arch was the Landscape Arch which we hiked at 7:30 in the morning.   That hike is probably the most popular one in the park, as by 10:00 a.m. there are NO places to park.   An added bonus to that early morning hike was encountering a mule deer grazing about 30 yards from us!   The hike was 1.6 miles to the arch with some elevation and gravel surface.  There was a short side trip to Tunnel and Pine Tree arches.   We liked the park so much that we visited the park three times while we were in Moab! 

Skyline Arch - Arches National Pk