Skip to main content

2016 Fall Mountain Trip Part 14; Canyonlands National Park and the Island in the Sky

By
The day after arriving in Green River after traveling through Bryce Canyon National Park and Capitol Reef National Park I get an early start on what would be a long day.  I took I-70 eastward into Grand County and followed the multiplexed US 191 south from the freeway towards Moab to Utah State Route 313.  My start to the day was in Canyonlands National Park in the Island of the Sky District.


This blog serves as the 14th Part of the 2016 Fall Mountain Series; Part 13 can be found here:

2016 Fall Mountain Trip; Utah State Route 24, Capitol Reef National Park, and Goblin Valley State Park

UT 313 connects to Grand View Point Road which is the main route through the Island of Sky District of Canyonlands National Park.  From UT 313 I made my way south to the tip of the Island of the Sky on Grand View Point Road to Grand View Point for view during sunrise over the confluence of the Colorado River and Green River in addition to the La Sal Mountains.


Canyonlands National Park is a relatively new National Park having been established in 1964.  Unlike most National Parks the Canyonlands was not a National Monument nor carry any other designation of note.  Canyonlands National Park consists of four districts; The Maze, The Rivers, The Needles, and the Island in the Sky.  The Island in the Sky consists of land on the plateau between the Green River to the west and Colorado River to the east.

From Grand View Point I gradually made my way up most of the overlooks and Grand View Point Road and did some minor hiking.


Headed northward on Grand Point View Road I detoured west on on Upheaval Dome Road and Green River Overlook Road to the view point of the same name.


Over the years I've visited Canyonlands National Park several times.  The most hazardous trip was in 2013 when I drove the Island of the Sky over a layer of compressed snow.  Suffice to say the Green River Overlook appears much more differently with a thick layer of white snow.


Probably the most underrated view is near the Island of the Sky Visitor Center high above Shafer Canyon Road.


Shafer Canyon Road is an 18 mile four-wheel-drive road way connecting Grand View Road east to Utah State Route 279 near the Colorado River at the Intrepid Potash Mine.  Shafer Canyon Road directly accesses the White Rim Road which traverses the perimeter of the Island of the Sky.

Back in 2015 I traveled on UT 279 west from US 191 in Moab along the Colorado River.  UT 279 is an approximately 15 mile State Highway which was intended to end at Dead Horse Point.  UT 279 was legislatively approved in 1961 and opened in 1963 to the present terminus at Shafer Canyon Road.  The second half of UT 279 to Dead Horse Point was never built and was deleted after UT 313 was approved on the existing county roadway to Dead Horse Point in 1975.  The roadway along UT 279 is must see with the cliffs high above lining the Colorado River.








Part 14 of this blog series can be found here:

2016 Fall Mountain Trip 15; A Dead Horse of course and Utah State Route 313


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Paper Highways: The Unbuilt New Orleans Bypass (Proposed I-410)

By
  There are many examples around the United States of proposed freeway corridors in urban areas that never saw the light of day for one reason or another. They all fall somewhere in between the little-known and the infamous and from the mundane to the spectacular. One of the more obscure and interesting examples of such a project is the short-lived idea to construct a southern beltway for the New Orleans metropolitan area in the 1960s and 70s. Greater New Orleans and its surrounding area grew rapidly in the years after World War II, as suburban sprawl encroached on the historically rural downriver parishes around the city. In response to the development of the region’s Westbank and the emergence of communities in St. Charles and St. John the Baptist Parishes as viable suburban communities during this period, regional planners began to consider concepts for new infrastructure projects to serve this growing population.  The idea for a circular freeway around the southern perimeter of t
Post a Comment
Read more

Hernando de Soto Bridge (Memphis, TN)

By
The newest of the bridges that span the lower Mississippi River at Memphis, the Hernando de Soto Bridge was completed in 1973 and carries Interstate 40 between downtown Memphis and West Memphis, AR. The bridge’s signature M-shaped superstructure makes it an instantly recognizable landmark in the city and one of the most visually unique bridges on the Mississippi River. As early as 1953, Memphis city planners recommended the construction of a second highway bridge across the Mississippi River to connect the city with West Memphis, AR. The Memphis & Arkansas Bridge had been completed only four years earlier a couple miles downriver from downtown, however it was expected that long-term growth in the metro area would warrant the construction of an additional bridge, the fourth crossing of the Mississippi River to be built at Memphis, in the not-too-distant future. Unlike the previous three Mississippi River bridges to be built the city, the location chosen for this bridge was about two
1 comment
Read more

Memphis & Arkansas Bridge (Memphis, TN)

By
  Like the expansion of the railroads the previous century, the modernization of the country’s highway infrastructure in the early and mid 20th Century required the construction of new landmark bridges along the lower Mississippi River (and nation-wide for that matter) that would facilitate the expected growth in overall traffic demand in ensuing decades. While this new movement had been anticipated to some extent in the Memphis area with the design of the Harahan Bridge, neither it nor its neighbor the older Frisco Bridge were capable of accommodating the sharp rise in the popularity and demand of the automobile as a mode of cross-river transportation during the Great Depression. As was the case 30 years prior, the solution in the 1940s was to construct a new bridge in the same general location as its predecessors, only this time the bridge would be the first built exclusively for vehicle traffic. This bridge, the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, was completed in 1949 and was the third
Post a Comment
Read more