Canyonlands (Point C)
Once we visited the few places in Arches National Park, we headed to Canyonlands National Park. This is par is literally a massive land of canyons. It kind of reminds me to to the quote when Mufasa tells Simba "everything the light touches will be yours" in the Lion King.
There are multiple view points and trails you can explore in this park, but the most famous one is the Dead Horse Point.
Long story short, this is a beautiful area where the river creates a canyon surrounding a little mountain creating a flat surface in the rocks.
It is indeed pretty interesting, and Its name is coming from a peculiar story, so if you are interested you can learn more about it in this link.
There are multiple view points and trails you can explore in this park, but the most famous one is the Dead Horse Point.
Long story short, this is a beautiful area where the river creates a canyon surrounding a little mountain creating a flat surface in the rocks.
It is indeed pretty interesting, and Its name is coming from a peculiar story, so if you are interested you can learn more about it in this link.
We arrived to this area pretty late from Arches, so we decided to check the place and then camp near by. We tried to access the canyon first, but suddenly out of nowhere a guy with a red light in his head stopped us. The area was restricted for the night because apparently they were shooting a time lapse video of the canyon at night... so cool! They had 18 cameras laid out along the cliff so they can capture the whole landscape.
I recommend to be ready for the sunrise on this canyon. It's just gorgeous how the mountains start to light up with the first sun's rays of the morning, and there is a "valcony" where you can set up your camera with the tripod to capture the land in its whole.
So, because of this, finally we decided to set up a camp really close from the shooting point. We checked the weather and it seemed that we would have a nice forecast for the night, but we were wrong. About 30 min after we set up the camp, a big storm started. It felt that my tent was about to start to take off because of the strong winds, but the worst came for my traveling buddies.
Because the forecast seemed good, they left the roof of their tent naked, to literally sleep under the starts, but of course, when it started raining, the tent was flooded in 2 seconds...
Quickly I told them to pick up all their belongins and run into my tent, and now just try to picture this for a second, we ended up, 4 soaking wet people standing on a 2 people tent, full of mud, in the middle of the desert while a storm is passing by. Great night!
Finally everything calmed down and we could figure out the sleeping arrangements. 2 people on my tent and the other 2 went to find the car to get some rest at least on a dry place. The bad news were that, the next morning they told me that they couldn't find the car and they spent a couple of hours walking... even a greater night for them!
I recommend to be ready for the sunrise on this canyon. It's just gorgeous how the mountains start to light up with the first sun's rays of the morning, and there is a "valcony" where you can set up your camera with the tripod to capture the land in its whole.
So, because of this, finally we decided to set up a camp really close from the shooting point. We checked the weather and it seemed that we would have a nice forecast for the night, but we were wrong. About 30 min after we set up the camp, a big storm started. It felt that my tent was about to start to take off because of the strong winds, but the worst came for my traveling buddies.
Because the forecast seemed good, they left the roof of their tent naked, to literally sleep under the starts, but of course, when it started raining, the tent was flooded in 2 seconds...
Quickly I told them to pick up all their belongins and run into my tent, and now just try to picture this for a second, we ended up, 4 soaking wet people standing on a 2 people tent, full of mud, in the middle of the desert while a storm is passing by. Great night!
Finally everything calmed down and we could figure out the sleeping arrangements. 2 people on my tent and the other 2 went to find the car to get some rest at least on a dry place. The bad news were that, the next morning they told me that they couldn't find the car and they spent a couple of hours walking... even a greater night for them!
Grand Canyon - North Rim (Point E)
From Canyonland we headed south to the border of Utah-Arizona. In our road trip we hit this area twice, once heading sout towards the Grand Canyon and the second one coming back north towards our return. So I am skipping right now the border area and I will group our visit in the next post. Now, it's time for one of the biggest iconic place in the whole USA if not the most important one, The Grand Canyon!