SW Landscapes: Post Four – Dead Horse Point State Park & Canyonlands National Park

Contained in the following posts is the telling of a trip we have talked about for many years – a trip we took with our new teardrop camper – an extended trip of three+ weeks – a trip in which we expect to bear witness to a stunning diversity of amazing landscapes – a trip to the majesty of the Southwestern National Parks.

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We reserved a campsite at a state park to be close to Canyonlands and Arches National Parks, yet we came to realize Dead Horse Point State Park is a spectacular destination in itself. The park is situated on top of the Dead Horse Mesa surrounded by breathtaking canyons. The large mesa comes to a point of land where this park is located. The point is an expansive area connected to the main mesa by a narrow neck. The story is that ranchers would round up the wild mustangs that ranged the mesa and drive them across the neck and onto the point then close off the neck with a makeshift fence. They chose the mustangs they wanted and left the rest to die a slow death of thirst – despite the Colorado River in sight in the canyon below. The name stuck. We drove over the neck and into that same point. Vestiges of the fence from yestertime remain in place (but no dead mustangs). We hiked around the point along the east rim, over the neck, and back along the west rim to the viewpoint. The canyon landscape is phenomenal in its grandeur and beauty – breathtaking!

Canyonlands was the first national park on our trip to the Southwest. Maybe it being the first plays into my response to this park, but the views of the canyons stretching out before us at every viewpoint in such a rich array of color will forever make this park a favorite. We drove and hiked from viewpoint to viewpoint with each stop unique in form and breathtaking in grandeur.

A Canyonlands vista

As the BWCAW is a wilderness of lakes, rivers, and forests on the northeastern border of Minnesota and Canada, Canyonlands is a wilderness of rock at the heart of the Colorado Plateau. These sacred remaining wilderness landscapes offer experiences vital for the human spirit to experience. Central to the national park cause is the critical imperative that we do all we can to preserve these environments for the souls of those of us yet to come.

If the rocks could talk, they would tell a story spanning the last 50 million years of alternating layers of sediment deposited at the bottom of the vast sea that covered this part of the continent building up over time to form the sedimentary rock base of this landscape. Over time tectonic forces moved, cracked, and lifted the earth’s surface in the great Colorado Uplift creating a mosaic patchwork quilt landscape. Water and gravity then cut these layers into hundreds of canyons, mesa, buttes, fins, arches, and spires. Our Canyonlands visit was in the “Island in the Sky” section of the park – an island carved by the Green and Colorado Rivers. Every viewpoint looked across canyon after canyon stretching 100+ miles to the horizon. The descriptive word we kept repeating was breathtaking. Everywhere we looked this spectacular landscape truly took our breath away.

Canyonlands was established in 1964. Prior to that, this remote land was visited only by the hardy few Native Americans, cowboys, river explorers, and uranium prospectors.  This vast wilderness remains largely untrammeled – its roads remain mostly unpaved, trails primitive, and rivers free-flowing. The National Park Service is committed to the preservation of this land and making it available to the public. Today, we can explore and enjoy this landscape by car, foot, and horseback. What a gift to the thousands from around the world communing with this spectacular landscape.

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Post Five – Canyon Insanity (in which we take a breath-taking drive to the bottom of the Shafer Canyon)