In 2021, Arches NP had more than 1.8 million visitors, making it the 16th-most popular U.S. national park among the 63, while Canyonlands National Park had about half as many, 911,000, or the 28th-most popular park. It’s an interesting example of the beaten-path phenomenon.

That’s because it’s a five-minute drive to Arches from Moab, the sizable town where people stay to visit the park, and indeed where we stayed. The closest entrance to Canyonlands, on the other hand, is about 40 minutes away from Moab. Not a long drive, but not nearly as close as Arches, so that’s where people go.

So many, in fact, that this year the NPS is trying out a timed-entry system to Arches, to avoid huge lines at the park’s single vehicle entrance early in the morning. To space visitors out, that is. I reserved a time months ago, 9 a.m., so it was no problem getting in, and the park didn’t seem too crowded as the day went on, though certainly a fair number of people were around. Maybe the system is working.

In any case, I wasn’t about to miss Canyonlands, at least part of it. Two weeks ago, we left Moab for Salt Lake City, spending the morning of May 20 at Canyonlands. Or rather, at the Island in the Sky District of the park, a poetic naming choice that sums up the region nicely.

The day was overcast, and about 20 degrees cooler — the 60s F. rather than the 80s — than the day before in Arches. A front had blown through the night before.

Unlike Arches NP, Canyonlands is fairly large (more than 337,000 acres), and like Gaul, divided into three parts. Island in the Sky, but also The Maze and The Needles, separated mostly by the courses of the mighty Colorado and its almost as mighty tributary, the Green River.

Soon after entering Island in the Sky, you’re at the Shafer Canyon overlook.

Way down in the canyon is the unpaved Shafer Trail Road, which leads to the equally unpaved White Rim Road, a wide loop around Island in the Sky. We’d see that road later, from a different vantage. We’d also see, looking rice-grain small, a handful of vehicles on White Rim, including motorcycles kicking up pinpricks of colored dust and no doubt fulfilling a desert riding dream or two of their riders.

Further down the paved road is the short trail to Mesa Arch.

Eventually, the arch is easy to spot.

Quite a view under the arch.

It was here that the awesomeness of Canyonlands began to dawn on me. I was looking into a canyon — marked by its own, deeper complex of canyons.

Awesomeness was really hammered home when we got to a spot called Grand View Point Overlook. With a name like that, it’d better be good.

The territory near the Grand View. Nice, and a bit more reddish here, but little hint of things to come.

The overlook itself. We walked a quarter-mile or more along the edge of the canyon — the wide canyon complex, reaching miles into the distance, created by the Colorado and the Green.

Wow. The atmosphere was a little hazy that day, but that hardly mattered. My images really don’t do the place justice, but that was a persistent theme on all of this trip.