Dead Horse Canyon, one of the many meanders of the Colorado River. That improbably blue lake is a potash evaporation pond. This is a state park that, like national forests, has to earn its keep.
Potash is one of the constituents of the salt dome that this whole plateau rests on. The salt got there, millions of thin rock layers below the top surface, as ancient seas sat and evaporated in climate cycles when this edge of the North American Plate was still down at sea level.