Island in the Sky May 30, 2009

Broke Camp and drove to Dead Horse Point.  It is a point off a mesa where the neck connecting it to the rest of the mesa is about 30 yards wide.  Cowboys used to round up horses onto the point and pick the ones they wanted to keep or sell east.  The rest they would leave on the point to find their way off.  Apparently there was an extremely dumb group of horses or someone forget to leave the gate open and a group of the horses died of dehydration within sight of the Colorado river.

 

There is a potash “mine” visible from the lookout point.  The blue pools are for drying out potassium chloride brine which is then scraped up with huge road scraper trucks and shipped off to be used for de-icing and fertilizer.  Apparently the blue is added to help it evaporate faster.

We then drove to the Island in the Sky portion of Canyonlands National Park. 

Hiked up to Upheaval Dome which seems to be a big crater with a pile of gypsum in the middle.  There are many theories as to why it exists.  Meteorite or comet impact or a salt dome bubble seem to be the two main ones.  All the layers of rock surrounding it lean upward towards the middle though. ???mystery!????

We then followed GPS coordinates to try to find Lost Kiva.  A premier, but well hidden photo location.

This is the stupid crazy we aren’t going out here no matter what the GPS says ledge at which we said, “Oh well, time for lunch.”

 

Saw lots of overlooks with lots of motorcyclists touring.  Evan liked the sidecar of one guy which looked like an airplane nose.

 

While Beth painted, and discovered that landscapes were not her forte, Gary and Evan returned to try to find Lost Kiva with another photographer couple who had the same book with the directions.  The above photo explains the problem we had earlier.  They found the right trail down and Gary got to take photos.  Evan said Gary’s mustache was smiling the whole time as he got to play with the other man’s huge wide angle lens and use photographer jargon like “neutral density filter”

Here’s a couple photos from Lost Kiva.

We went back to camp and made hamburger helper with turkey, washed dishes and went to see the sunset.  Gary finally got to photograph cliff rocks in the setting sun (above).

We went back, went to bed and listened to the tent flap wildly and shake in the wind. Woke up, had a good breakfast using the Dutch oven to make choc chip muffins, also bacon and pancakes.

  

Saw Mesa Arch on our way out, on a gentle 1/2 mile loop trail which if wheelchair accessible is a 1 was probably a 2.5

Saw  this hairy road up to the mesa called the Shafer Trail.  It’s supposed to be 2wd accessible, but Gary and I wouldn’t risk it.  Looks less than a lane wide in places with a plummet on the down side.