Big holes in the ground: Canyonlands National Park
Canyonlands is the most remote and inaccessible of the parks we've visited. Most of the park can only be accessed via a 4-wheel drive vehicle on rough roads, and it's a raw, forbidding, and arid landscape. A lot of the activity here seems to involve off-road driving and river rafting - you would need to be a seriously self-sufficient backpacker to hike very far in this wilderness.
We spent most of the afternoon driving through the Island in the Sky, the northern portion of the park. Island is a large mesa bounded by the Green & Colorado rivers, which come together further south.
What impresses about Canyonlands is its scale as well as its wildness. From viewpoints on the top of the mesa, you can look down 1,200 feet to the sandstone layer of the White Rim; the rivers have carved canyons another 1,000 feet deep below that. The air here is pristine; from the mesa, you can see almost 100 miles to the horizon.
Even the limited walking we did this afternoon was brutally hot. I think we're all looking forward to cooler temperatures and greener landscapes in the Rockies. We're heading out to dinner in Moab tonight. Probably will sleep in tomorrow, then hope to get breakfast at the Jailhouse Cafe before leaving town.
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