I'm certainly hoping our May visit to Utah will be just the first time we visit to explore this amazing area. The Colorado Plateau is an enormous jigsaw of geology, canyons, cliffs, erosion, history, pre-history, paleontology, stark beauty, power to be respected, gigantic vistas, hidden nooks and crannies, and much more.
Because it was our first visit, and we didn't really know what to expect, we camped too far away but in a familiar place. However, it meant our drive to the park put us there from late morning to late afternoon, which doesn't provide the most awesome lighting conditions.
One of the landmarks seen shortly before the Canyonlands entry gate is the Navajo Rocks, with a large parking lot and multiple trails for mountain biking. The small clump of trees just below the large column-like structure is where the trailhead parking lot is located and there are around a dozen Jeeps visible in my photo when it's expanded to 100%. That might give a tiny foregleam of the immensity of all the views in this amazing place. So it was incredibly hard to cull my photos down to just a few that might represent all we saw while we were there.
I'd never before realized how big Canyonlands National Park is -- totaling more than 500 square miles! It's broken into four districts, and to simplify my own notes, I would say three elevation areas. The districts are Island in the Sky, generally the highest elevation, at around 6000 feet, and roughly triangular, following the convergence of the Colorado and Green rivers. The Rivers District is,
of course, the Colorado and Green rivers and their confluence, and it's frequented by rafting tour groups; it's at the lowest elevation, around 4000 feet. In between is the rough country of The Needles District, easterly of Island in the Sky, and The Maze toward the west and south; both are anywhere from a few hundred feet to about 1500 feet lower than Island in the Sky. The higher elevation of Island in the Sky is where most tourists go because it has the most developed roads and easiest access. The Needles District can be accessed by Utah Highway 211 south of La Sal, and has plenty of less-developed roads as well as hiking and biking trails; The Maze District is almost entirely accessible only from four-wheel-drive trails. The most interesting of these trails is White Rim Road, a 100-mile loop that can be seen from a number of overlooks.
The White Rim Road is approximately 1,500 feet below the level of Island in the Sky, with the Colorado and Green Rivers more than 500 feet lower than that. The Shafer Road winds down to the level of the White Rim Road in narrow, hair-raising switchbacks. Today, the road is
recommended for high-clearance 4x4s and mountain bikes, but interestingly, the National Park Service has a photo from 1965 of a Volkswagen Beetle negotiating giant rocks at the lower end of this trail. Back then, Beetles could go just about anywhere!
White Rim sandstone is one of the middle layers of 25 identified geological layers in the Park and is named for its striking white color. As can be seen in the larger photo above, the White Rim sandstone stands out dramatically from all the red tones of the other sandstone layers. Getting accurate colors in my post-processing
is difficult because the Entrada sandstone (the tops of the buttes in the far distance above)
are nearly purple-red, while the Navajo sandstone (Aztec Butte at the top) can be pale gold with orange inclusions. Most layers have their own color palette and different lighting conditions certainly changed them, too.
Many of these views show how vast this area is, and how difficult it is to explore. The Needles District, introduced by the two photos above, is marked by thousands of monuments and small buttes separated from the cliffs and talus slopes of the larger landscape. The La Sal Mountains are probably 30 miles away by sight; the Abajo Mountains even further. In between, there are formations with names like The Totem, Wooden Shoe, Angel Arch, and Paul Bunyan's Potty! If it works out as we plan, we'll head back that way to camp in the La Sal Mountains and explore some of this District in the fall.
As always, I'm intrigued by the people who made their homes in these dry and rugged canyons for more than a hundred years; there are granaries, petroglyphs and pictographs, some homes and other evidence that people spent much time here centuries ago. These people were widespread, too. Evidence of their presence is seen from north of Dinosaur National Monument in northeastern Colorado to Mesa Verde in southern Colorado, throughout this area, along with swaths of Arizona, New Mexico and northern Mexico. And long, long before that, before desertification took over the area, dozens of dinosaur species thrived here.
Exploring this immense geologic puzzle could easily take a person a hundred years or more; likely more for me, since I'm not fond of heat! But I'd happily come back and do some of that exploration just to learn additional tidbits about this harshly beautiful country. I'd love for you to keep up with my posts and let me know your thoughts by filling out the Contact Denise form on my About tab or including a comment on this post. As always, I'm expanding my portfolio of photo art and stock photography at www.denisedethlefsen.com, so check back to see what new images might be posted.
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