Leslie and David's Wanderings: 8 May 2021 Island in the Sky

Having spent so much time in the Needles district of Canyonlands NP, we were looking forward to the Island in the Sky district. Island in the Sky is located on the Colorado plateau from which all the canyons eroded from. We approached the entrance and were surprised to find a line to get in. Being further away from Moab, we thought it would be less visited. But we ended up crawling along for 30 minutes to reach the entrance fee station. Once in the park, we stopped at the visitor center, then the Schaffer canyon overlook from which we could see the steep 4-wheel drive Schaffer Trail road we planned to take on a future visit. Then headed for our first hike, Mesa Arch (0.7 miles, 88 feet of elevation gained, 592 calories burned). This is a popular trail and it was very busy. Mesa arch is spectacular because of the incredible expanse of canyons you can frame through it. We really enjoyed the views through the arch, even with all the people in the way. We headed next for the Upheaval Dome area of the park. Along the way we went out to the Green River Overlook to see down into the canyons carved by the Green River over millennium. We had planned to eat lunch at Upheaval Dome, but there was no parking available, much less a picnic table. So we headed back toward the junction until we found a really nice overlook with a place we could pull the truck off the road to eat lunch. We were sharing the spot with another couple of Texas who had the same idea. We then worked our way down to the parking area for the Grand View Point Overlook. Again, the parking lot was packed but we managed to find a spot big enough for the Behemoth and grabbed our hiking gear. It was kind of funny that we kept running into people we had seen yesterday in Arches. We took the Grand View Point trail (1.8 miles, 173 feet of altitude gain) from the overlook to the points. The trail runs along the edge of the cliff (2500 feet down) out to the point. It was fun to watch people posing for pictures on the rock overhangs without realizing how far the drop off was below them. The views down into the canyons of the Needles district were amazing. We could see the White Rim road running along the cliff edges to the next layer of canyons. We plan to take this 100 mile road later in the week. We could not see the confluence of the Colorado and Green Rivers due to the haze.