National Parks: Canyonlands

If you read my last post about Mesa Verde National Park, you know we left headed for Moab, Utah and a sunset at Dead Horse Point State Park. So why is this post titled Canyonlands National Park instead?

Well, we arrived in Moab and were able to check into our hotel a little early. We stayed at Field Station and honestly, it’s been one of our favorite hotels on the trip! It’s clearly an old-school hotel that’s been renovated, but every change seems purposeful. For the first time, we had a spot for every single one of our bags, the cooler had a small freezer section, and there were hooks along the walls for hanging our dirty hiking clothes. Clearly, this was a place that had been designed with national parks in mind.

And that makes sense, given that Arches National Park, Canyonlands National Park, and Dead Horse Point State Park are all within a short drive (we just didn’t know all that yet!).

After an early dinner, we made our way to Dead Horse Point State Park. We drove past Arches (which we would be exploring the next day) and took the turn to Dead Horse Point…only to discover that four miles further down the road lies Canyonlands National Park.

We joked about what makes something a state park versus a national park and why I might have chosen Dead Horse Point over Canyonlands in my initial planning (honestly, I couldn’t tell you!). But it planted the seed that maybe I’d picked the wrong park. Or maybe…we could visit both!

The drive to Dead Horse Point involves a road with signs for cow crossings – and while the cows and bulls kept their distance from the road, we had a hungry calf grazing just inches from our lane. Not the brightest creature, but it was definitely cute!

After paying the park’s entrance fee (state parks are, of course, not included in our national parks pass), we drove to the end of the road – Dead Horse Point Overlook. And I discovered why I picked this park – it’s gorgeous.

It’s like a mini Grand Canyon and it’s filled with lovely photo spots. There were people on a picnic, people taking photos, people hiking, and my favorite – someone perched up on a ledge with a mosquito net around their face. Now, the bugs were definitely biting, so it was clear they’d been here before and wanted to enjoy their sunset!

Chandler and I walked around the lookout and took some photos. Ok, I took photos, and Chandler indulged me when I asked him to take some as well.

Soon after, we decided to start our hike. We didn’t have a lot of time in the park, so we decided to get the most bang for our buck by hiking the Dead Horse Point Loop (also known as the East & West Rim Hike). It’s a short 1.25 mile hike that offers views of – you guessed it – the east and west rim of the canyon.

The river down below reminded me of photos I’d seen of Horseshoe Bend in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area (which we’d be visiting in the next few days).

Parts of the path followed the canyon, while other parts drifted in and were practically on the road. The hike was super easy, but we definitely preferred the views on the west over the views on the east.

One thing we’ve learned on this road trip is that the estimated hike times are always longer than the amount of time it actually takes us (and that includes all my photo stops!). So we were done in plenty of time to choose another hike.

Instead, Chandler told me he’d looked up Canyonlands National Park and that, while the entrance was only four miles away, there are incredible views from the Green River Overlook 30 minutes out. If we left right away, we’d make it just in time for sunset!

So we raced back in the car for our second surprise national park on this trip.

I’ve had to look all this up since, but Canyonlands is broken up into four areas (districts). There’s the Island in the Sky, the Needles, the Maze, and the Rivers. Though they appear close on a map, there are no roads that directly link the districts. Traveling between them requires two to six hours by car as there are few places to cross the Green and Colorado rivers. The National Park Service said that most people find it impractical to visit more than one area in a single trip, so I don’t feel bad that we only made it to one out of four!

Neither the Maze, nor the Rivers are easy to get to and the Needles seem similar to Arches and Bryce Canyon (national parks we were headed to soon), so it seems that Chandler made the right call with the Island in the Sky. Thirty minutes later, we joined a handful of others at the lookout to enjoy this scene:

The canyons around Green River absolutely glowed and the view was breathtaking. I was so glad we’d decided to add the park to our itinerary last minute. And the fact that Chandler planned it made it even sweeter, since I know he wasn’t dying to see yet another national park : )

As we drove out of the park, we stopped to admire the sunset along different pull-outs. But nothing could top the magic of those canyons.

This was our second surprise national park (we had also been surprised by Guadalupe Mountains National Park when we were leaving Carlsbad Caverns). But we’d been through a number of surprise national forests and monuments as well – I decided to make a list of all the places we hadn’t planned on going that we got to experience during our road trip. So far, we’ve been surprised by:

-Guadalupe Mountains National Park
-Cibola National Forest
-Carson National Forest
-San Juan National Forest
-Chimney Rock National Monument
-Canyonlands National Park

I can’t wait to see what other surprises await us!