Our base for the next few days is Moab. It is the only habitation within many miles from which to explore Canyonlands and Arches National Parks. The city itself is laid back, likeable, 'buzzy' and swollen with tourists. At fist glance one could be forgiven for thinking the major business is T Shirt shops...perhaps it is!

Highway 191 follows the line of the Moab fault and north of the City a left turn leads to Canyonlands, however before reaching the National Park, a further left leads to the Dead Horse Point State Park, named from the days of old when cowboys corralled mustangs onto the point and sealed off the narrow neck joining the point to the main plateau.

At an elevation of some 6000 feet, views take in the La Sal mountains to the east and the open canyons and entrenched meanders of the Colorado River.

Some 2000 feet down from the high plateau lies a second plateau into which the river canyons are cut. It is a quite extraordinary sight.

Leaving Dead Horse Point we rejoin the road south and enter Canyonlands National Park, our first stop is to visit Mesa Arch.

Parking up we set off on a hike across the high desert floor rich with vegetation, Prickly Pear, Utah Juniper and Sagebrush, to find our way to this east facing Arch, longing to join it’s friends and relations across the valley in Arches National Park. Mesa Arch beautifully frames the view of the La Sal mountains and the lower plateau.

This area of Canyonlands has the nickname of “The Island in the Sky”, it is easy to see why as we look down on the lower plateau, the deeply carved canyons and rock formations of “The Maze”. The view is breathtaking and as Louise rightly observed “you just run out of superlatives” in describing it.

It has been a long very hot day, the hikes, whilst short have been many and all “add up”. We approach our final stop at Grand View Point close to sunset. The sun sinks low in the west, and the lower plateau is shrouded in haze.

Chatting to an “Old Timer” hunched over a tripod, mounted with a beautiful antique plate camera, we are informed that the haze is due to a combination of dust (from mining and 4x4 activity along the trails across the lower plateau) and smoke from wildfires in California.

We soak up the peace, and isolation as we watch the sun sink further and finally make our way, in gathering darkness, back to Moab for a cool locally brewed Goose Neck IPA.