Canyonlands National Park
The single best substitute for the actual Grand Canyon is Utah's Canyonlands National Park—just as spectacular and far, far less crowded
There are places in Canyonlands National Park—particularly the viewpoint over the junction of the Colorado and Green rivers from adjacent Dead Horse Point State Park (pictured above)—where you would swear you were the Grand Canyon itself.
If you had to pick one perfect substitute for the Grand Canyon, it would be Canyonlands.
Canyonlands is the largest of Utah's five National Parks, sprawling over 527 square miles and divided into three distinct sections:
- Islands in the Sky - Home to that Grand Canyoneqsue view.
- Needles - Amid the mesa lands south of Moab, home to pinnacles stacked from phyllo-like sheets of rock and 2,000-year-old Indian petroglyphs on the cliff sides
- Mazes - Isolated to the westerns side of the park and accessible only by a 46-mile dirt road, with the canyons themselves a day's hike beyond that—true back country, and spectacular.
Info: www.nps.gov/cany
This article was by Reid Bramblett and last updated in June 2012.
All information was accurate at the time.
Copyright © 1998–2013 by Reid Bramblett. Author: Reid Bramblett.
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