Canyonlands National Park, Moab UT

Saturday July 14

Today we visited the Island in the Sky district of Canyonlands National Park. The Islands in the Sky district is the most accessible of Canyonlands three districts and is about 45 minutes from Moab. It is a high plateau north of the confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers. All water in the Islands must be trucked into the park. Consequently they are pretty stingy with it. There is a water fountain at the visitor's center, but you cannot fill containers there. They do sell bottled water there. It continues to be very hot, over 100 degrees every day. We have been carrying about two gallons of water whenever we leave camp. We attended a very interesting ranger talk about uranium mining in the the area, before the park was created. During the 1950s there was a high demand for uranium. It was believed that the canyons in southern Utah contained significant deposits of uranium. There was little uranium actually found in what now comprises the park, but the search led to the building of a number of roads that made the park more accessible.

We did a number of short hikes and overlook walks. The Islands normally has exceptional views, but there was significant haze due to the fires and/or air pollution. Later in the evening we went to Dead Horse Point State Park, located one mesa over. Dead Horse Point is a mesa with a narrow neck that made for a natural corral. Wild mustangs would be driven onto the point and a fence set up across the neck, until the cowboys could cull the herd. Legend has it that, for an unknown reason, the mustangs were left on the point and died of thirst, within sight of the Colorado River 2000' below. We attended a scorpion talk by a Utah Wildlife biologist. He had a number of scorpion specimens, both living and not. One interesting trait of scorpions is that they flouresce under black light, making them easy to find at night. After the talk we walked around the visitor's center and found about half a dozen scorpions. Cool!

Sunday July 15


Today we explored the Needles district of Canyonlands NP. The Needles are more remote than Island in the Sky, about 2 hours from Moab. We stopped at the Needles Outpost, a private campground and store just outside the park boundary. The outpost was really neat. They have to haul in all their water. They had a huge solar array, tons of batteries and powerful invertors. They make their own power that runs their air conditioners, ice cream and drink coolers, freezers, etc. Have you ever had solar ice? Pretty cool! We had them fix us a cheese burger with chips and salsa. They operate a private airstrip and sell gasoline for $4.25 per gallon. Actually their prices were not too bad, considering what they have to go through to get their products. Super-nice folks.

The Needles contains more hiking opportunities than the Islands district. Unfortunately, due to the heat, we didn't feel like hiking very long.
We did do about 4 miles into Elephant Canyon to get a glimpse of the unique needles formations. Along the trail we met a father and son from Asheville. We had a big time y'all-ing and talking about grits, sweet tea and that stuff.

We left the park about dusk and saw a large herd of turkeys, several herds of pronghorns and a coyote. There were thousands of rabbits at the edge of the road, and about every quarter mile one would dart out in front of the car. I don't think we hit one, but I don't know how we missed them all.