June 13th Moab Utah

Sunday June 13th I signed up for an offroad tour of Canyonland NP up to the top of "Island in the Sky". Met the guide at the Navtec office in Moab at 7:45 a.m. and boarded a large SUV with three rows of seats. Being first on, I took shotgun up front for the tour. We drove to a campground on the north end of town to pick up the other passengers, a family from Massachusetts, husband, wife, two college age children. We all drove from there on up north and turned off of US-191 to follow the Colorado River westward. Some miles down the river we stopped at the main boat launch facility for a break. From that point we were off road (well, off of the main roads) onto well traveled dirt tracks bouncing over the rocks. Stopped at one point to view the ancient pictographs left some 1300 - 2000 years ago. On up to the big bend in the Colorado river and took a movie of the panorama. I tried to upload the three minute movie into the blog, but 7 hours later I finally pulled the plug. Will deal with simple pictures from now on. On up the trail from overlooks to Hoodoos to cliffs going straight up. Then we came to the base of the "Island in the Sky", a plateau 2000 feet above up that looked to be almost straight up. The small trail moved back and forth across the side of the cliff, switchback after switchback, and climbing higher at each one. The view out my window was virtually straight down and the base was getting further and further away. At the top, I took this picture off across the Canyonlands and you can see that it is aptly named.