Saturday, February 18, 2023 was our last full day in Moab, and Sean and I planned to spend it up in the Island in the Sky District of Canyonlands National Park. We had been there the previous Sunday to start the trip’s adventures, and now we we would bookend the trip with a return to see the things we had missed, including a very famous arch. And we also wanted to go on a proper hike, finally.

In the morning, we were up and out the door at 8am to capture some of the morning light.

Instead of going to Moab Coffee Roasters again, we went to Sweet Cravings for breakfast burritos for then and sandwiches for later. We got talking to the woman behind the counter who wanted to know what our day’s plans were. After we told her that we were going to go up onto the Island in the Sky, she observed, “It’ll be a cold day, but a nice day up there.” She continued, “There might be a lot of people because the race everyone’s in town for got cancelled. But not a million people.”

We ate our burritos in the car as we drove up onto the high plateau and entered the Park.

We headed directly to the parking area for Mesa Arch, which was only about a third full. Not bad for one of the most visited places in the Park. The trail up and over a ridge was a little slick because of the folks who’d hiked it since the District reopened after the end of the snowstorm two days earlier.

From the ridge top, we could see our destination: Mesa Arch, perched right on the eastern edge of the mesa.

At the arch, we took in the legendary view through it across the White Rim all the way to the La Sal Mountains.

We headed back to the Jeep.

But not before Sean left a reminder of Elsa in the snow.

Next we headed over to Green River Overlook on the other side of the mesa. Here we took in big views to the west and southwest.

Someone or something had left a small jawbone on the log railing of the overlook.

Then we drove to the nearby parking area for the Murphy Point Trailhead. The trail, a 3.6-mile out-and-back, leads to a point jutting southwest off of the main trunk of the mesa halfway between Green River Overlook and Grand View Point. It was the opposite of the White Rim Overlook hike on the eastern side of the Island in the Sky that we’d done six days earlier.

The trail was snowy, but well trodden that day. We started hiking at twenty minutes to eleven.

It was very, very bright. And I ended up with a sunburn on my face from the reflected snow.

The Rabbit who made these tracks was happy to use the human trail until it wasn’t the shortest route between two points.

The views from Murphy Point were a variation on what we’d seen at Green River Overlook.

After taking them in, we started back.

From the trail, we did get some fantastic views of striking Candlestick Tower to the northwest.

We passed several other hikers. One pair was a woman and her late-twenties-ish son, who was an off-duty Ranger. “He’s half my age and he works here,” she observed as she struggled a bit on the snowy trail.

We arrived back at the trailhead at ten minutes after noon. It had been a good little niney-minute hike, even if it hadn’t really offered any new scenery.

For the remainder of the afternoon, we looked forward to checking out a few more stops along the Park Road that we’d previously skipped. And then we also wanted to visit Dead Horse Point State Park on our way back down into Moab.