Sunday, June 30, 2013

Dead Horse Point State Park

WOW!  Beautiful sceneary again. 

Dead Horse Point - In the 1500's, Spanish explorers released horses in the area during their travels.  For 300 years the herd roamed the area free.  During the 1800's, cowboys and ranchers chased the wild horses onto Dead Horse Point.  There they build fences behind the horses as the entrance is only 36 feet wide. They removed the saleable horses and "broomtails" were released back into the wild.  Legend has it that a group of "broomtail" horses were left on the point to die of thirst and hunger and that's how it got its name.   Today, wild horses do not live in the park.   

Dead Horse Point State Park

The Colorado River at DHP

Pinion Pine
 
Pinion Pine fence
 


Canyonlands - hazy from smoke.
 
The haze just kept getting worse.....
This area is Utah's "Grand Canyon".  It is not as deep or as wide, but every bit as breathtaking.  Lots of movies were filmed here - Thelma and Louis when they drove their car over one of the cliffs, Mission Impossible II with Tom Cruise, are among the more famous.  Canyonlands is "greener" with lots of scrubby bushes, pinion pines, and wildflowers when it rains.  It got really hazy while we were there, and we didn't get a lot of good pictures, but we enjoyed it anyway.  Temperatures are above 110 degrees.

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