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Utah Travel Headlines

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Discovering Southern Utah's Canyonlands

MSN Travel has this new article about exploring the national parks and other scenic areas in Utah's canyon country. Here are excerpts:

Here, surrounded by the naked eons of Earth's history, it's impossible not to be reminded of your insignificance, but the silent, overwhelming beauty of the landscape invites you to feel intimately part of it.

The low gray sky unloads an unseasonable rain, slicking the trail and making it seem even more dangerous, but as I reach the top, a break in the clouds provides a stunning denouement. I look down from a fin of vertical red rock and see a full rainbow spread out, not above but beneath me, arching across the green valley and serpentine river far below. It feels like the scenery, so epic and vivid in the sudden sunlight, is drawing the air from my chest. So this is what they mean by breathtaking.

After the solitude of the desert, the bustle of bandanna-clad tourists in Moab is a shock. On the banks of the Colorado River, the town's slickrock mountain biking trails, raftable white water and ample desert for off-roading all make for an outdoorsy action theme park. Surrounded by T-shirt shops, real estate offices and healing-crystal emporia, I feel like I'm in a Gen-X Jackson Hole.

Not for the first time in the past few days, I'm in a world unlike any I've ever seen. And as the current wafts us toward the next bend, I steep in that oddly enjoyable, revelatory state so common in the Canyonlands: of wondering what grand marvel, what strange mystery will greet my eyes next.


Read the entire article.

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