Moab Weekend: Arches National Park

After our rafting adventure on the Colorado River, we decided to take a little time and visit Arches National Park on the return home. We didn't see the whole park of course; mostly just what we could see by vehicle. We did get out and hike to Delicate Arch Viewpoint though. It was about 3 miles. In that scorching heat ~ it was all we could stand. I would love to hike this park in February or March someday. In fact, there is a lot around the town of Moab that I would enjoy exploring. Another time; a future adventure :)

Arches National Park has over 2,000 natural stone arches, in addition to hundreds of soaring pinnacles, massive fins and giant balanced rocks. It is a red rock garden........

The Balanced Rock 

Here is a little information I obtained from the NPS website:

The forces of nature have acted in concert to create the landscape of Arches, which contains the greatest density of natural arches in the world. Throughout the park, rock layers reveal millions of years of deposition, erosion and other geologic events. These layers continue to shape life in Arches today, as their erosion influences elemental features like soil chemistry and where water flows when it rains.

Arches is located in a "high desert," with elevations ranging from 4,085 to 5,653 feet above sea level. The climate is one of very hot summers, cold winters and very little rainfall. Even on a daily basis, temperatures may fluctuate as much as 50 degrees.

Delicate Arch

The visitors looked like little ants crawling on boulders from where we were standing........

One instagram photo I stole from Audrey........"delicately holding Delicate Arch."

A rock garden. Despite the great variety of living things found here, most of the surface of the land, at least three quarters of it, is sand or sandstone, naked, monolithic, austere and unadorned as the sculpture of the moon. It is undoubtedly a desert place, clean, pure.
~ Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

The poetry of the earth is never dead.

~John Keats (1795-1821)