The Arches National Park is one of the Utah Mighty 5 national parks and was the one that was highly anticipated during my recent mid west America trip. The park is famous for its geological formations, there are over 2000, including the longest arch in America which we shall see in a minute.
Arches is at just outside a town called Moab in Utah, connected by the Highway 191, which is the road at the top in the image below. The entrance to the Arches National Park is via the little slip road entrance on the left-hand side. You can see there's a queue of cars lining up towards the entrance booth, I reckon we were queuing for about half an hour to get in, and am so glad we're not here duri5ng the peak season. After passing the entrance booth, we zig zag up the roads to the park and the arches.
The first arch I saw is the Tunnel Arch. The arches here are of different sizes and shape, likely due to its age, geology, position etc. The opening here is relatively small, hence the name the Tunnel.
A little further on is the Pine Tree Arch. You can walk right up to the arch but it was really hot and I couldn't be bothered. I actually waited ages to get this picture because there was another couple here first and they were taking photos of one another. In order to get rid of them As a good citizen and friendly tourist, I offered to take some photos of the two of them. They were very pleased with my help and left afterwards. Now I had the whole arch to myself😄
It's not fun hiking under the sun at noon, and especially when you're not well prepared with sun lotion and hat. The less than 1 mile walk to the Landscape Arch took me a good half an hour. I was so relieved when I finally reached it, and it was totally worth it.
After lunch and a rest, we moved to the next part of the park, the Sand Dune Arch. But first of all we had to go through a very narrow gorge which is only wide enough for one person to pass through. Most of the opening is blocked by a massive rock where I'm standing on, waving to the rest of my group who were coming through.
As you can see, the sun is still shining brightly overhead and the gorge has widened up after the initial entrance. Most of the landscape I've seen so far today are arches or massive rocks. The Sand Dune is totally different, hidden away waiting to be explored. For a start, it's call the Sand Dune because the areas is all covered in sand.
