Canyonlands - The Needles - upper portion

 A few days ago, I posted some photos from Canyonlands- The Island in the Sky portion.  This national park, unlike others, is in three distinct sections, none of them assessable to the other!

Looking SW 2000' feet above the canyon tops

We chose to save the Needles portion until we'd moved a bit further south to Monticello and our campground at Devils Canyon.  The third portion of the park, The Maze, is pretty rugged and remote, so it was not even on our 'list' for this trip.

Looking N from the overlook

The Needles portion has two sections: The overlook, where you look down upon miles and miles of red canyons and rock formations, and the lower, or southernmost section where you are down in amongst the rock formations.  This post covers the upper portion.

The sheer cliff, 2134' above the floor.  As Tom said, the builders of the ramada had 'big' ones!

We visited this overlook, at the end of the road, on a very windy day.  Most of this trip has had very windy days, but this one was a bit windier - 35+ mph at the top of the ridge!  Due to the high winds, the late morning arrival and the high heat - 104- the vistas were rather blah.  Too much dust in the air, too many heat waves for clear photos and it was just too darn hot!  I will admit to doing quite a bit of post-processing on these images - especially the 'dehaze' lever to even get an image presentable!

A tiny bit of green where water recently flowed.  It appeared dry.

We spent 90 minutes or so checking all the different view points out, but we both were less than impressed.  After a discussion, we determined that we'd much rather be down in, among the canyons and valleys, than looking into them.  So, off we went to the lower Needles section.

Tom waiting in the shade for me to wrap up the vista shots!