CANYONLANDS, UTAH

A solo campervan trip across the deserts of Utah and Arizona (and a little Colorado)

By Stories She Saw

August 20^th, 2018

After a couple of cold days at Bryce Canyon (catch up here ), I drove the five or so hours to Canyonlands in the east of Utah, near the town of Moab. Due to the fact that I was living the #digitalnomad working life while on this roadtrip, I quickly found a boondocking site not far from Canyonlands and Arches National Parks, and spent the rest of the day and the next morning catching up on emails, sipping on premade margaritas and eating my weight in cheese. I may have been on the road and living with a startup salary, but that never meant that I could not treat myself!

Canyonlands is a huge National Park, about 1,400kms squared, split into four distinct areas: the Island in the Sky, the Needles, the Maze and the Combined Rivers (Colorado and Green). I was on an annoyingly tight timeframe, and my lack of organisation and planning meant that I didn't know the variation and scale of Canyonlands. (But that just means that I have plenty of reasons to return!) I spent my brief time hiking around the Island in the Sky, which lies in between the Colorado and Green rivers, and is also by far the most accessible area of the Park.

What struck me about Canyonlands was the unfathomable vastness. It just laid before me for hundreds of miles, to the point where I wondered whether I could almost see the curvature of the earth.

The solitariness added to the scale. There was no-one else around, despite it only being a 40-minute drive from the hub of Moab. I saw so few other people that it was as though the landscape was forgotten in time, and mine - only mine - to explore.

While travelling alone and juggling work, my days were typically dictated by sunrise and sunset, as those golden hours provide the best light for photos and also the optimum temperature for exploration in a summer desert.

The sunset I witnessed at Canyonlands on my only day there nearly made this agnostic turn to the lord, for it is almost impossible to comprehend that someone or something higher up did not have a hand in such incredible beauty.

I drove down to Grand Point Overlook, at the end of the road and found space in a carpark not too far from the trailhead. I passed a few dozen people at the beginning of the lookout - more people than I had seen all day - and worried that I was too late for the best vantage point. To avoid the small crowd, I continued further down the trailhead, and only 200m or so down the 3.2km track, I had the view, the cliffs and the sunset to myself.

On one side of the trail, which acted as a peninsula, was the fading light and dancing shadows of the White Rim Canyon, then below it the Colorado River. As the sun set behind me, reds and oranges that we do not have words for appeared in the sandstone. It was other worldly, each second more beautiful and stunning than the last.

The other side of the trail peninsula laid the Green River and the sun dipping behind the horizon. My eyes lit up with reds and oranges and purples and greens as the sun hit the rockfaces and the temperature dropped. There was not one - not one - other person that ventured this far down the trail.

I had the entire landscape, the entire sunset, to myself.

My one sunset in Canyonlands was a reinvigorating and delightful moment. I cannot believe that I was the only one to witness it - did it really happen? Was I really there?