One day at Canyonlands National Park (Island in the Sky) | Mesa Arch, Upheaval Dome, & overlooks!

We have made it to the Moab area for our final couple weeks in southern Utah, and we're starting off our time here at Canyonlands, our fourth Utah National Park. Canyonlands is made up of four districts, Island in the Sky, The Needles, The Maze, and the two rivers that divide the park. For our first Canyonlands adventure, we'll be exploring the Island in the Sky District, which is the most popular district in the park and the easiest area to visit. And to kick off our one day here, we're hiking to the iconic Mesa Arch for sunrise. Mesa Arch is probably the most iconic site in this part of Canyonlands National Park, and it's very, very popular for sunrise photography. We had read to get here about an hour before sunrise, so we can actually get a spot to snap the photo, the iconic photo. It's about 5.30am. There were about four other cars here, so we're going to cross our fingers that by the time we get out there, we can get a spot. It was amazing to finally see this view in real life. It's one of those, like, screens. But yeah, really cold, extremely busy. We're here on a weekday, and very, very busy, but that's just kind of part of the experience. You have to just go into it knowing it'll be very busy with photographers, but it was fun. But it's the cold. I'm just so cold right now. It's great. Okay, now that we've warmed up a bit, it is time to go explore. So we are in the Island in the Sky District of Canyonlands, which is called that because basically this area is a big flat top mesa that's higher than the land surrounding you. So you've got the Green River to the west, and the Colorado River to the east. And this area is kind of more accessible because it's mostly overlooks and short hikes, which is what we're going to do a good mix of today. We have made it to the first overlook of the Upheaval Dome. Wow. Oh, cool. That's crazy. Yeah. Much of Canyonlands is made up of layers of sedimentary rock, which makes it relatively easy for scientists and geologists to look at and tell about the past of the park. But that gets a little different when you come to Upheaval Dome or when you're thinking about Upheaval Dome. So this area is a bit different because a lot of the rock is broken and tilted up. And there's two theories of why they think this is. So the first theory, what's called a salt dome theory. So there's thousands of feet of layers of rock, and sand is forced up through this over millions of years, creating this dome. The second theory is they think a meteorite could have hit this area, and the reason they think this is because they found lots of evidence and rocks that have encountered this kind of pressure that only could have been from a meteorite or an atomic explosion. They're leaning more towards the meteorite theory, but it's still very hotly debated. And the area today is a research zone. The Upheaval Dome trail is about 1.8 miles round trip, and it takes you to two different overlooks. The second one was definitely our favorite of the two. We think you're a little bit lower than on the first one, but you have a closer up view of all the crazy rocks that are just down inside this big crater in the ground. It is a little bit more confusing to get to though. We kind of got a little lost. So just make sure you follow the rock cairns, and you do have to climb up kind of a steep slick rock. The next trail we're doing is the False Kiva trail. It's not clearly marked on the road, so it's a bit tricky to find, but what you do is you park at the Alcove Spring trailhead, and then you walk across the street a little bit, and you'll find a trail through the brush, and it should be about 1.9 miles round trip. This trail is mega confusing. We are following all the cairns, but it's not what the All Trails map says. As you can see, we've gone a crazy way, but we think it's right. We don't really see another way to go, so I don't know. So we're here at the end underneath this giant alcove, which is really cool, but we just cannot find where this False Kiva is. It's truly false, because we are not finding it. We think it's somewhere up in here, but... Yeah, according to the one photo I can see on All Trails, we think it's up in there, but it's super loose rock and just dust and... One slip does not... Yeah, we don't feel super comfortable to be honest, so we're going to listen to our gut and turn around, but the view from here is amazing, so it definitely wasn't a total bust. And if you're dying to know what a kiva is, it's basically a Puebloan room for political and religious meetings. And this one's called a False Kiva because they don't know if it was actually used as a kiva or the origins of it, and this one's truly false to us because we just couldn't get to it. We saw at the beginning of the trail that there was closures at the end because of some vandalism, but we didn't see anything at the end to show that it was closed or any fencing or anything, so... Okay, I don't know if you can see it at this angle, but we'll show you, but there is some signage way up in that little cove corner there. For some reference on where we turned around, we turned around kind of where those trees are with all the rocky stuff underneath the alcove, so we would have just had to go up, which kind of seemed like that would have been hard, up and into that nook right there. So that's okay. I can kind of see it. Just took like a cookie. So this crazy road down here is the Schaefer Trail, which is a dirt road that winds 1,500 feet down through all these cliffs. There are some gnarly switchbacks, and they suggest that you have high clearance and 4x4 to do it, so we're going to skip it this time, but it's been really fun watching all the To give you an idea of where in the park we've explored so far today, we started with Sunrise at Mesa Arch, then headed to Upheaval Dome, sort of hiked to False Kiva, and then visited the Green River Overlook and Schaefer Trail viewpoint. We're now leaving the park for a bit and driving 40 minutes to Moab to grab some lunch. For lunch we came to a spot called Antica Forma, which is a Neapolitan-style pizza place, which is a style that originates from Naples, Italy, and we hear this place is super legit. They fly in the flour from Italy and the tomatoes, they make their own mozzarella, and they grow a bunch of ingredients in the back, and then the girl just told me that they flew in the pizza oven from Italy too, so this is about as close to Italy as we can get right now. So we got two pizzas, and it says on the menu that their personal size, so it's okay, okay? So first of all, we got the classic margarita, so it's got the pizza sauce, homemade mozzarella, basil, and olive oil. This is the pistachio pizza, so instead of the regular pizza sauce, it has a pistachio pesto, mild sausage, basil, homemade mozzarella, and olive oil drizzle. These pizzas are cooked in an oven at 800 degrees for 90 seconds, and it gives it these little leopard spots on here, which is apparently a classic marking of a Neapolitan-style pizza. That is the best pizza I've had in, I don't even know how long. It has, it just, you can tell, it is extremely high quality. The sauce is just, it's not too thick, it's a little like, kind of runny, but it has a really good tomato flavor, the cheese is so good, the crust has like the perfect amount of like, kind of crispy on top, but super pillowy and just fluffy on the inside. It is absolute perfection, and then it's really thin, where the actual like, toppings are, it's just perfect, perfect, perfect. This one is ridiculously delicious. The pistachio sauce, or pesto, gives it such a nutty flavor, just very hearty taste. The sausage, so much peppers going on in there, and spices, the cheese is creamy and delicious and salty, and then the crust is just amazing. I'll steal something from our guy, Guy Fieri, out of bounds. Oh boy, that was bomb. Roll us out. And we're back. We just made a quick pit stop at the Buck Canyon Overlook, which is this really interesting looking canyon right behind me. Instead of being like, the steep walls and really deep like a lot of them are, it has more of a stair-step, crumbled, layered kind of look. It's very different. One thing that we're really loving about this area, and this overlook, is that there are snowy mountains off in the distance. So you have the snowy mountains, then the red dry desert, which is just such an interesting contrast. Next up, we are heading to Grand View Point, and if the parking lot is any indication, it's got to be one of the most popular places in the park. We actually had to park in the Orange Cliffs parking lot because there was no parking. So there's an overlook at the Grand View Point, but there's also a hike that you walk along the rim one mile each way. If you have time to do the trail from the Grand View Point, definitely do it. You get a different view from the overlook. You get more of the south view, and you get the needles off in the distance. It's just absolutely beautiful. Currently sitting at the end of the White Rim Overlook, and there are views as far as the eye can see. For our final stop of the day, we are watching the sunset at Candlestick Tower Overlook, which is not a marked overlook, but there is a pull-off on the side of the road that'll fit three or four cars. There's this huge rocky area where you could just spread out and watch the sunset. Tons of great little picnic spots, and it faces west, so it's the perfect sunset spot. And the views are crazy gorgeous. You can see the canyons over here, some of the crazy rock formations over here. It is just perfect. That was a magical sunset. The colors were so beautiful, and it totally made up for a cloudier than we had hoped for sunrise this morning, which was still beautiful, but just a little cloudy and so dang cold. We also met someone named Luis while we were up here, who watches our videos, which is crazy. So thank you, Luis, for coming and saying hi. It totally made our night, and it was really awesome to meet you. We had a great first day in Canyonlands. We have one more day in the park, but we're going to spend it in the Needles section. But first, we're going to spend a couple days at Arches National Park. And we had hoped it would be a little bit sunnier, but... It wasn't. I suck at this, didn't I? We got this. I'm so cold that I have... These gloves aren't working, so I put my hands... Like, I'm balling them up to keep them warmer. So now I have these weird fingers, and I can't hold the cup.