Dead Horse State Park and Canyonlands National Park

 Today we went to Dead Horse State Park located just before the Canyonlands National Park.

Dead Horse overview where the Colorado river winds.

  ( Dead Horse Point State Park is a state park of Utah, USA, featuring a dramatic overlook of the Colorado River and Canyonlands National Park. The park is so named because of its use as a natural corral by cowboys in the 19th century. The "dead horse" part of the name is that the corral was abandoned, but the horses did not leave the corral, even after the gate was left open, and died there. The park covers 5,362 acres (21.70 km²) of high desert at an altitude of 5,900 feet (1,800 m). [Per Marcia Cooper, Coordinator for the Elderhostel Program "Utah's Parks and Monuments," and former resident of Moab, Dead Horse Point was named by early Mormon pioneers for a rock formation at the base of the plateau. It is clearly visible and looks like a dead white horse lying on its side. 

The plateau is surrounded by sheer cliffs 2,000 feet (610 m) high with only a narrow neck of land 30 yards (27 m) wide connecting the mesa to the main plateau. Thus it was easy for cowboys to simply fence off this narrow neck, and keep rounded up wild horses from running away. Legend has it that one group of horses was inadvertently left fenced in and eventually died of thirst. The area was also used in the final scene of the 1991 film Thelma & Louise.)

After Dead Horse, we went through Canyonlands National Park from above, since yesterday we saw it from below along the Colorado river. I am not crazy about heights so I preferred the view yesterday! The drop offs are quite deep..1000-2000 feet down.