Enjoy Canyonlands National Park on the Southwest Highlights Tour, and explore the beautiful and diverse desert landscapes it has to offer, with rock formations you won’t find anywhere else.
If you’re looking for things to do on Canyonlands National Park tours, look no further! If you only have a short amount of time, consider a short hike to Island in the Sky or The Needles, but carry a map if you do! While all hikes have small rock pile markers, a failsafe option is essential.
If you’re planning on trying Canyonlands National Park guided tours, there are many activities you can do in the park. Outdoorsy folks are in luck, as you can explore the park by hiking, on horseback, on a bike, and more!
There’s the option to embark on something a little higher octane on most Canyonlands National Park excursions. For example, you could try boating down the whitewater of Cataract Canyon. There are 14 miles of rapids that range in difficulty and a permit is required to boat here.
Every Canyonlands National Park trip is unique and the landscape feels like it’s never the same twice. If you camp overnight in the park and stargaze, you can enjoy the wonders of the skies unhampered by light pollution and noise.
Join our Canyonlands National Park guided tours to discover all this and more, as well as the rich Native American history of the groups who traditionally inhabited this land. You can find evidence of these ancient and contemporary cultures in structures and rock markings.
Located in southeastern Utah, Canyonlands National Park can be found near the town of Moab. The park preserves a colorful landscape eroded into countless canyons, mesas, and buttes by the Colorado River, the Green River, and their respective tributaries.
The park is divided into four districts: the Island in the Sky, the Needles, the Maze, and the combined rivers—the Green and Colorado—which carved two large canyons into the Colorado Plateau.
The colorful rock formations of Canyonlands showcase its unique geological history that began more than 300 million years ago.
The rock that exists in the park today traveled by wind and water, having been eroded from the ancestral Rockies and Appalachians. In its new home, this rock deposited to become distinct layers of sedimentary rock. Some layers were deposited by rivers, surrounded by lakes and swamps. These sandy channels sat apart from other thicker deposits brought by the wind. These created vast sand deserts and dune fields across the area.
The rock gradually accumulated into layered formations. Back then, canyons hadn’t yet formed. The only sights were sloping plains and rivers. While many of the rocks exposed began at sea level, they rose over time. On average, some formations now stand as high as 5,000 feet above sea level.
Geologists trace this elevation back 20 million years ago when the Earth’s crust moved and radically changed the North American landscape. These subterranean movements created cracks in the surface, allowing the melted rock to rise. At times, it cooled before reaching the surface, resulting in fragments of harder rock in sedimentary layers.
This erosion eventually exposed such harder deposits, which resulted in the creation of the mountain ranges visible from Canyonlands: the La Sals, Henrys, and Abajos.
We often get asked, when is the best time to take one of your Canyonlands National Park trips? And the answer depends! The park is open eight hours a day, 365 days a year. However, we recommend visiting in either spring or fall.
The climate is much milder in these seasons, plus there are fewer visitors in the park. This means you can enjoy your hikes uninterrupted and get great shots of the landscape. Temperatures average from 60 to 80 F and the nights are cooler.
Our spotlight tour is Incredible Adventures’ Southwest Highlights Camping Tour – 7-Day Adventure from Las Vegas. Join us for a week of eight amazing destinations, plus a bunch of unforgettable activities.
From seeing the birthplace of Route 66 to hiking Zion, Bryce, Arches, Canyonlands, and Grand Canyon National Parks, our tour of the real wild west will give you a camera full of beautiful images and memories to last a lifetime.
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