Centered in the southeast of Utah but extending into the surrounding states, the canyonlands are nature's sculpture garden where the constant wind picks up tiny grains of the dry sands and slowly abrades the sandstone rocks into beautiful shapes.
Approaching the canyonlands from the south the areas with enough water to support grasslands are restricted to these buttes which are all that remains from millenia of erosion.
As the land becomes drier the towering arches begin to appear until in the Arches National Park these natural carvings fill the horizon so I can't really capture it all at once..
Here is a rather compressed panorama of sandstone arch geology. The slot on the left probably was an arch at one time but the top has collapsed. The one section has a completed hole and the others are a work in progress. The pillar hints of a face below the cap which may balance on top with time..
Throughout the park the variety of shapes and designs seem to be endless and also constantly changing. The arches and balancing rocks are not static and several have colapsed or fallen just in the short (geologically speaking) history of the park. What you see today may not be there if you wait too long to come back again.
Finishing up this visit to a very beautiful but harsh landscape are a few more of my favorites including a reminder that flowers are all about us.