Woke up to a bit of a surprise this morning. There was another car parked in my campsite with two people sleeping in it! Since I had to contact the campground host about extending my stay anyway, I told him about it and he, in turn, told them they had to leave and pay a fine. Odd situation. If I had asked them to move and they refused, what were my options? Had I then gone to get the campground host, they could have trashed my car and tent and been gone in two minutes.

Having resolved the uninvited guest problem and extended my stay for two more days, I decided to spend the day in "Dead Horse Point State Park" and "Canyonlands NP Island in the Sky District". Both are a bit higher, and so, a bit cooler with a different type of scenery. The name "Dead Horse Point" has an interesting story behind it. It is a flat topped mesa with steep cliffs on all but one side. During pioneer times the local people used it as a holding pen for wild horses. They would drive then up to the mesa via the one side that can be accessed and then block off a narrow (30 yards) neck in the mesa top to form a natural corral while they selected and "broke" the wild horses to the saddle. When finished they would remove the barrier at the neck and leave. The remaining horses, however, were thirsty and could see the Colorado river from the end of the mesa, would not move AWAY from the water and died of thirst. This story does not ring ring true to my ear but it is a good tale.

While in Dead Horse Point SP I got to watch a movie being made. The film, and most of the crew, were Indian (Asian Indian, not American) and they were set up on a cliff edge right at the narrow part of the mesa, so it was hard not to notice them. Lots of equipment and people spread out over one of the parking lots. They were using the view from the edge of the cliff as background for a dance shot. They would film a, perhaps, 10 second segment a dozen times and then move on to the next 10 second segment. Watching this gets old very quickly and strikes me as one of the more bizarre ways to earn a living.

Both Dead Horse Point and Canyonlands Island District are similar flat topped mesas with cliffs on most sides . These give you some impressive views of the green and Colorado rivers and the canyon systems that surround them. This is a bit like the Grand Canyon but not so "Grand". The tops of the mesas are relatively flat an not terribly interesting as scenery. Two notable exceptions are "Mesa Arch" and "Upheaval Dome", both in Canyonlands. Mesa Arch is similar to those found in Arches NP , but being located on the edge of the mesa and facing the cliff, it has some interesting scenery so be seen THROUGH the arch as a bonus. Upheaval Dome is a geologicaly puzzling feature that has been attributed to volcanic activity, an upward moving salt dome or a meteoric impact. It certainly looks like it could have been blasted into the landscape by some sort of explosion or impact. It is a, roughly, circular feature 2 miles in diameter and 500 ft. deep with a central mound that looks like nothing so much as a slag pile from Pittsburgh. The central hill is a different color and the rocks in the surrounding area look like they have been fractured as well as weathered. The impact story makes sense to me and could, probably, be verified by an excavation in the central hill, but it is a tough enough place to get to on foot, let alone with excavation equipment.

My campsite is next to the "group" campsite and someone has reserved it for a kids birthday party. Next time I will pay more attention to picking a site or bring earplugs.