It’s a 40 minute drive from Moab to the Island in the Sky district of Canyonlands National Park. After a quick stop at the Ranger’s Station, we headed to the iconic Mesa Arch, a pothole arch with a 50 foot span that seems to cling precariously to the side of the cliff. Through the arch, we caught sight of the Colorado River winding through the canyon as it has done for millions of years. For a few moments, we were alone at this magical place.

Mesa Arch

One of four districts in the Canyonlands National Park, the Island in the Sky is a mesa more than 1,000 feet high. Every overlook offers a different perspective of this treeless, carved, colorful terrain. We were fascinated by a sign explaining the various layers, from kayenta (the top sandstone) to chinle (colorful crumbling slope) to moenkopi (brown ledges). When I try to imagine the forces and eons that created this landscape, I get the same feeling as when I try to imagine the shape of the universe.

From a geological perspective, most of Canyonlands is orderly and well understood. Upheaval Dome is not. In simplistic terms, it’s either an meteor crater or a salt dome, but geologists are not in agreement about its origins. The Upheaval Dome trail was one of my favorites. We scrambled up bare rock to a high point above the dome, or anticline, which is around 6 miles in diameter and less than 170 years old. Pictures can’t capture the impressive scale of this geological mystery.

Upheaval Dome

On our way back to the car, we discovered definitive evidence of ancient aliens. . . just kidding. These Giger-esque geological features are called tafoni, from the Greek “taphos,” or tomb. This is honeycomb tafoni and is most likely the result of interactions between salt, water, and wind wearing on the sandstone.

Tafoni