Canyanlands National Park
Visited on May 16, 2026
Mostly A Driving Park
Canyonlands! To us this felt very much like a mini grand canyon. The scenery is similar but feels more crisp / sharp. We were big fans of the edges along the flat areas that drop off so sharply.
There are multiple districts to Canyonlands, but we keep it to the 'Island in the Sky' district. We were renting a car, and the other 2 districts required much more driving through unpaved road, and we weren't willing to risk it in the little rental.
The Island in the Sky district is a big fork with 2 main branches that we were able to see just about all of. We started with the branch that includes the Grand View Point Overlook and finished with the branch that includes the Upheaval Dome.
We found that this park didn't require much time spent hiking, unlike most of our other park experiences. Most of the views are readily available, since you're already at the top of the canyon and looking down off the edge. We did a lot of short stops along the road and capped it off with a hike to the Upheaval Dome.
We spent about ~3.5 hours in the park, and felt like we saw pretty much all of it. There were hikes available that we skipped. A lot of them required going down into the canyon more than we cared to, since we could already see everything perfectly well from the top
Mesa Arch
This was well worth a stop, and we got lucky and got a parking spot just as we rolled up. This one seemed like a popular one, so I think just as easily we might have been boxed out.
It was a short easy hike to the arch. There were a a lot of fun plants along the way.
The arch was really beautiful, and was fun sneak peek for the Arches park that we were gonna visit next. There was a bit of a queue to take a picture with the arch, but since the parking lot is so small the line went quick.
Overlooks
There were a number of overlooks just off the road that we stopped at, particularly on the grand view point side of things.
There's not much to say about them, they were all relatively empty and easy to find a spot at, and we found them all to be worth a quick stop and look.
Make sure to stop on both sides of the road so that you can catch some of the green river.
Upheaval Dome
This was easily our favorite part of the park. It's really striking, and the colors in these photos are very true to life. The blue/green of the rocks was unlike anything I've really seen before.
I believe this was ~a mile hike, we stopped at the first lookout since it was higher up and didn't seem to have a worse view than the ultimate stopping point later on in the trail.
This really was a must see. If memory serves, it's a big salt deposit that either is working it's way up through the ground, or the land above it was washed away / eroded.
On the way into the park, there were bands of similar color along the cliff walls that served as a bit of a teaser for this rock. Some folks at the lookout asked us what it tasted like, but we didn't end up sampling it.
Whale Rock
This was ultimately worth a stop for the cacti on the trail. I didn't hike up all that much, but just enough to see some flowers in full bloom and then turned around since this was the last thing to do in the park and we were ready for lunch.
Final Thoughts
This was a great little district! Definitely worth a short stop if you're going to say Arches already. We found that we could do the whole thing in ~ 3 hours and felt like we got the gist.
Maybe one day we'll make it to the other districts, but probably not haha
National Parks Log
- ✓Zion National Park(Utah)Rank #3
- ✓Arches National Park(Utah)Rank #4
- ✓Rocky Mountain National Park(Colorado)Rank #5
- ✓Capitol Reef National Park(Utah)Rank #11
- ✓Canyonlands National Park(Utah)You are hereRank #13
Remaining Bucket List
- ○Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park(Colorado)
- ○Bryce Canyon National Park(Utah)
- ○Glacier National Park(Montana)
- ○Grand Teton National Park(Wyoming)
- ○Great Sand Dunes National Park(Colorado)