Canyonlands National Park - Island in the Sky entrance and the unmarked petroglyphs

The drive to Canyonlands was a wide open straight road for a couple hours. You start to see a bit of the plateaus and canyon like formations as you get close. We chose the Island in the Sky entrance. We passed right by our campsite and drove into the town of Moab. We found the Sun Outdoor camp ground, but it was the wrong one. We had one near the Canyonlands entrance and drove back the 12 miles to find it. It was good to drive into town. We found a nice Mexican restaurant we returned to for dinner and we found the entrance to Arches National Park and saw the back up.
We made it to sunrise at Mesa Arch. We woke at 5:00 am and drove the 30 minutes to the parking lot. There were only 2 other cars in the parking lot when we arrived. It was a short 0.3 mile hike out to the arch. A flash light is necessary in the dark. The large stone blocks along the trail keep you heading in the right direction. I was able to set up my tripod to “hold” a space for the actual sunrise. By the time the sun peaked out there were 40-50 people at the arch. It was definitely worth the early wake up.
We headed to the end of the road and the Grand Viewpoint Trail. It was a two mile round trip hike to the end of the “Island”. The views out, way out, into the canyons is spectacular. On one side in the Green River and the other side is the Colorado River. In the southern distance the Green River and the Colorado River come together, although you can’t see it from this viewpoint. The name Islands in the Sky comes from the plateaus elevation over the canyons.
You can drive down to the canyon floor on the Shafer Canyon Overlook Trail. It is a dirt road the winds down the side of the plateau to the bottom. The entire road takes about 4 hours and that was longer in the car than we wanted to undertake.
We did drive out to the Upheaval Dome and I walked out to the first viewpoint. There is a seven mile trail that take you around the “dome”, but the heat and payoff didn’t seem worth the difficult trail.
Lastly, we stop at the Intestine Man petroglyphs just a couple miles from the turn off into the park. It is not marked on the road. We used Google Maps to get up the small two car turnout. It is just a 100 yards off the road and they are very cool.
On a next visit I would drive down the Shafer Trail just to the bottom and come back up and stop at Dead Horse Point State Park.

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The early wake up was worth the sunrise at Mesa Arch. It was a remarkable experience. Thanks for sharing.