Canyonlands, Island in the Sky & The Needles

I gave up on pictures from the Arches, so I'm on to the Canyonlands. Hopefully I'll have better luck.  Only 30 miles from Arches  is Canyonlands Nat. Park. It is the largest National Park in Utah, but many people don't even know about it. The Arches is so much more famous. People that don't go are really missing out. It is so big that it has 3 distinct areas that have 3 separate entrances. Can't go in on entrance and see all 3. We went to two, Island in the Sky and the Needles. They are 65 miles apart.  The Maze is so remote it only is for hikers or bicycles.   Very unusual to have 2 so close together. Even tho they are very close, the terrain is completely different. Arches had huge rock formations high into the sky. The Canyonlands are deep, deep canyons.

Remember the movie, 127 hours?  It was about a climber that got his arm stuck between 2 rock cliffs. He sawed his arm off with a pocket knife and hiked out.  It took place in an area of Canyonlands that you can't drive to, The Maze.    The same time we were there, they had to rescue a 53 yr. old man that was so inspired by the movie, he hiked to the same area.  He got lost.  He was inspired, but not enough to go with a partner.   Also a long distance runner (woman) had to be rescued. She had been badly injured and wouldn't have lasted another night.  What were these people thinking by going alone?

 Denny walking out to an observation point.

We went for a short hike.  This group of hikers passed us up like we were standing still. The leader was carrying a pizza  for everyone to share.  As you can see there were no guardrails. They certainly got close to the edge.  The leader even told them to stand back.

Remember the movie Thelma and Louise?  The famous last scene where they drive off the cliff rather than go to jail was filmed in Canyonlands.   To see the exact place, we would have had to take a jet boat ride down the Colorado.  We didn't realize this until we were already on the Light and Sound Show tour.

I wanted to show a lot more pictures, but I have again given up.  Took many, many hours to download just these 4. I think I'll have to wait until we go to the another place.