Arches National Park is just outside Moab, UT, and about 5 miles from Canyonlands. The day was sunny and 95 deg. Very hot so take lots of water!!
The first stop along the 40 mile round trip thru the park is an area called Park Avenue because the rocks resemble sky scrapers. Below are pictures from Park Avenue.
The view on the right is looking thru Park Avenue trail toward the big rock in the background which is Courthouse rock. You can see hikers along the trail if you look closely. This will give you some perspective of the size of these "rocks". It is awesome.
The view on the right is looking thru Park Avenue trail toward the big rock in the background which is Courthouse rock. You can see hikers along the trail if you look closely. This will give you some perspective of the size of these "rocks". It is awesome.
The next picture is of the left side of Park Avenue from the viewpoint area. It looks like that rock will topple off doesn't it??
The next view is of the right side of Park Avenue - the sky scrapers.
Another view above of the Park Avenue trail toward Courthouse.
The windows area has lots of things to see. This arch is the South Window and I'm sitting underneath on the right. It was a nice trail thru this area to Turret Arch and the North and South Windows.
This is a view from the trail between Turret Arch and Windows arches. It's a very spacious park. As you can see we have our water with us. It's in the camel pak around my waist. It holds 1 liter of water.
This is a view of both the North and South Windows. We hiked around behind these windows on a primitive path but couldn't get up to the windows from that angle so had to come back to the main path. I wanted to sit under the arch you know!!
This picture is of Turret Arch and there is another small "window" on the left side of this arch.
The picture to the right is part of the "Great Wall". After you leave the Park Avenue area you drive along this wall for several miles going to Balanced rock.
Another view of the Great Wall.
Balanced Rock is on of the most famous stops in Arches. It was told that when a bus tour stopped here one of the elderly gentlemen didn't believe the tour guide that his rock was "balanced". He thought it was cemented to the rock below so climbed the rock and then told the tour guide he was right it wasn't cemented. Now you are not allowed to climb the rock. There is a small hike around the base of this monument which we took and there are some nice views from the back side of the park's spacious lands.Along the drive thre are "fins". Rocks which are like slices out of the stone. This is a view as we go toward delicate arch parking area.
The actual trail up to delicate arch is 1.5 miles and an elevation change of 1600 ft. I didn't think I could handle that so we went for the viewpoint upper trail hike of 1/2 mile with 200 ft elevation change. It was 95 and very hot, but the view was worth it. They had another lower trail but the view was 3/4 mile from the arch so we opted for the longer trail up to get the good photo of delicate arch.
Terry is going back down the trail from the top here.
As you can see from this photo some people actually did the 1.5 mile hike up to the arch. There are some people under the arch and along the trail to the left. Again, very hot day and the trail did not provide any shade!!One of the spacious views looking toward the Lasal Mountains.
Landscape trail tree thru the fence. This was a very sandy part of the trail and was like walking on a very sandy beach. The sand was really really fine so was hard to walk.
The landscape arch is 306 ft. long (longer than a football field). In the 90's part of the arch fell and was caught on camera by a tourist so today you cannot go under the arch. The arch at it's narrowest point is 11 ft thick. They don't know how much longer this arch will be around since there are cracks in the existing arch which could fall at any time. The sign at this arch shows the picture the tourist took of the falling slice. It was a 6 ft. thick slick that fell along the right side of the arch. You can see that is the thinnest side.
That's it from Arches.
Landscape trail tree thru the fence. This was a very sandy part of the trail and was like walking on a very sandy beach. The sand was really really fine so was hard to walk.The landscape arch is 306 ft. long (longer than a football field). In the 90's part of the arch fell and was caught on camera by a tourist so today you cannot go under the arch. The arch at it's narrowest point is 11 ft thick. They don't know how much longer this arch will be around since there are cracks in the existing arch which could fall at any time. The sign at this arch shows the picture the tourist took of the falling slice. It was a 6 ft. thick slick that fell along the right side of the arch. You can see that is the thinnest side.
That's it from Arches.
Next will be pictures of our house under construction!! We are now in Georgetown and hope to get pictures today.
Until later. Sandy
No comments:
Post a Comment