Today we hit one state park and one national park: Utah’s Dead Horse Point and Canyonlands.
Dead Horse Point is named because cowboys drove wild horses onto the narrow point and blocked the narrowest part. They took the horses they wanted and inexplicably left the rest corralled without food or water.
The iconic picture from Dead Horse Point is this one from their website. I did not hike far enough to get my own:
But here is a panoramic shot from the point. You can see the Colorado River.
The blue ponds you see are solar evaporation ponds. Intrepid Potash, Inc. mines potash by pumping water into the underground potash deposit and the salt-laden water comes up into the ponds. Blue dye is added to speed solar evaporation. Laser-guided scrapers harvest the potassium which is made into plant fertilizer. (You can take an engineer on vacation, but…)
Everywhere you go around Moab the scenery is gorgeous. Here are some photos from the road into the area of the parks. (Remember that you can click on a picture to make it larger.)
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- The Merrimac and The Monitor.
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- The Confederate Merrimac is on the left, of course.
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- Named after the Civil War ironclads.
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- Ecclesiastes 3:5a: A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together. But I have no idea why.
