Joe and Nancy

Joe and Nancy
Our Home on Wheels (Click on image above for our web albums.)

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Dead Horse Point SP, Utah

This photo was taken right in front of the visitor's center.
From Wiki:  Dead Horse Point State Park is a state park of Utah, USA, featuring a dramatic overlook of the Colorado River and Canyonlands National Park. The park is so named because of its use as a natural corral by cowboys in the 19th century. The "dead horse" part of the name is that the corral was abandoned, but the horses did not leave the corral, even after the gate was left open, and died there. The park covers 5,362 acres (21.70 km2) of high desert at an altitude of 5,900 feet.

This view also was just across the road from the visitor's center.  Off in the distance in the valley floor you'll notice the Intrepid Potash Company's evaporation ponds (27 of them).  It's quite an operation as we found out later.  More about that in our next blog however.  Stay tuned!

This photo was from a little further down the point from the visitor's center and the campground, about a quarter of a mile.  Dead Horse Point SP is up on a big mesa and about 35 miles from downtown Moab, UT, so it's quite a hike to civilization.  This campgrond is small, 21 sites, and the sites are small.  We barely cozied our MH into the space and could not level front to back.  But oh does it get dark at night, and quiet.  AL, you would just love it here, except for the other 20 sites of course.  Surprising however is the fact that they have 50A service and flush toilets.  Nice for a SP.


These photos were taken out on the furthest overlook/point at the SP.  The Colorado River is still an impressive view this far away from the Sea of Cortez, it's end point several hundred miles away.




The more we walked around the overlooks in this Park, the more we made an association with the Grand Canyon, a couple of hundred miles down the river.  This part of the river appears to be the beginning of the Canyon.  Truly awesome!




The Green River meets the Colorado here in Moab and from what I've read, the combination of two makes for some very interesting and challenging rapids below the union.  Above the union, the Colkorado is quite peaceful and slowly meanders it's way through Utah.



This was a nice family we met out on the end-overlook.  They were from the Salt Lake City area and were visiting for a couple days during spring break.  Note the cloudy sky to the west...hmmm!


I made sure NOT to step backwards as that first step off that ledge was about 200 feet down to the first ledge.  And if I survived the fall to this ledge :-) the next 800 feet or so would probably do me in  :-))  Note the clouds.

Well, we hustled on back the MH as we actually saw lightning to the west coming our way.  We discovered that this area only recieves about 9 inches of precipitation per year, and wouldn't you know that we were able to experience about one-tenth of their annual amount this evening.  It rained for about six hours.
Well, better run for now, as we will be heading out to Canyonland NP tomorrow and will blog about that next.  Till then Joe & Nancy.


2 comments:

  1. beautiful photos today!!..I know I would be taking one at every turn!!...thanks for sharing your day!..glad you didn't take that one step back!!

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