Dead Horse Point & Canyonlands National Park

Alright!

So we camped on the top of Arches National Park, and early the next morning we went for our last hike into "Landscape Arch".

Bright and early!

Breakfast 

We met these two on our hike

Beautiful morning!

Finally, Landscape Arch. On the right side you can see a huge chunk fell off. I guess it was back in the 90's, but they wouldn't let people come closer than this anymore.

So next stop was a state park called Dead Horse Point. It had a pretty crazy history behind it:

Back in the day, cowboys would herd wild mustangs on to one of these plains. The passage out to the point was very narrow. The cowboys would lead the horses out, then fence the passage, pick the horses they liked, and then leave the rest of the horses they didn't want fenced in. The remaining horses would die of thirst looking down on the Colorado River below.

So the coolest thing happened as we were standing there looking out on the view - a little hummingbird came and ate some nectar from the flowers right in front of us!

It was moving so fast that my camera couldn't get a picture where the wings were clear!

After Dead Horse Point, we headed over to Canyonlands National Park.

Canyonlands is a park with....well...tons of canyons.

"Green River Overlook" where you could see the Colorado River. Crazy scenery!

This was called "Upheaval Dome". I guess they hadn't quite figured out why this formation was here. It is just a big pile of greenish sand in the middle of nowhere. Some geologists thought it might have been salty remnants from an ancient sea, others thought it could have been a meteorite. Who knows?

We went for a stroll to take a closer look

After some pondering, we still couldn't figure it out, but the geologist in out group (seen here pondering) concluded that it definitely wasn't a meteorite, so I guess we think it is an ancient sea or an ancient volcano.

Jake teaches the Norwegian how to catch lizards.

Next viewpoint was simply called "Grand View Point Overlook".

After Canyonlands we headed for Bryce Canyon. I think it was like a 4.5 hour drive...Anyways, we stopped once on the highway and took a picture of this:

Pretty!

Advice for Canyonlands:

Canyonlands is a BIG park. We only saw about a quarter of it. The part we went to is called "Islands In The Sky" and is located on the north-east corner of the park. To get around in Canyonlands it seems like you would need a 4-wheel drive car. Many of the roads are just sand roads, and we would probably have gotten stuck in our car.

So the only advice here is: get a 4-wheel drive car.

I will post pictures from Bryce Canyon eventually. Bryce was my favorite park, I think. It was pretty cool!