Dead Horse Point

I could have been very happy as a geologist, I think. The landscapes of places such as Hawaii and the American Southwest absolutely fascinate me, particularly reading them as (natural) history.

Tourists at Dead Horse Point — The photographs don’t, can’t, do justice to the sheer panoramic vastness of the place.

(Click to enlarge.)

En route to Moab, we stopped off for a look over the Colorado River from Dead Horse Point.

Magnificent. Breathtaking.

There weren’t many Americans there. In my experience, Europeans love this sort of landscape. We always run into Italians, Germans, British, French, and so forth. Today, we spoke with a couple visiting from Cologne, Germany, who were effusive in their praise for what they were seeing. Europe has many wonderful aspects, but there is absolutely nothing like Dead Horse Point — or Zion, or Arches, or Canyonlands, or Bryce, or Zion, or the Grand Canyon — in Europe.

They had been staying in Colorado and were en route (by motorcycle!) to Las Vegas. I hope they knew that they were in Utah. (When I looked for a good photo of the place on Wikimedia, I found one by a German tourist who identified it as “Dead Horse Point Colorado.”)

Why do care?

Because places like this make me proud, frankly, of my adopted state.

Parts of Utah are simply phenomenal. World class.

Posted from Moab, Utah