Arches National Park

We are loving Moab, Utah, where we can drive four miles outside of town and be in Arches National Park.  We have made multiple trips there, where we are greeted by the tall fins of red rock.

We have been going very early or very late in the day to avoid the afternoon heat.  That also gives us the best lighting.  The red rock almost glows as the rising sun hits it.  We don't usually set the alarm clock to wake up, but that darn alarm going off at 5:30 is worth it to have a cool temperature hike and all this beauty all to ourselves.

It's hard to describe the grandeur of this place because it doesn't all fit into a camera frame.  To give some scale to it, Mark ran up beside this huge rock formation that is part of Courthouse Towers.  You'll be hard pressed to find him, but he is standing at the bottom left of the closest mountainous fin in the next picture.  He's a tiny light-colored speck next to the Courthouse.

Here is a zoomed-in fuzzy picture of him, and there is all that beautiful red sandstone looming over his head.

You can walk among all the huge red rock spires on a one-mile trail named Park Avenue.  Just like in New York City, walking on Park Avenue is a journey among the sky scrapers.

Some of those sky scrapers have names.  This one is called "The Three Gossips."

After this first section of the national park, we found the arches that it is named for.  There are 2000 arches in this national park--the most of any area in the world.  We visited a few of those arches in the Windows section this morning, and got a picture of Denisa standing in the North Window Arch.

Mark moved back so that he could picture both the south and north windows (with Denisa still standing under the arch) and together they form a Lone Ranger-like mask.  Denisa didn't volunteer to pose under the arch until she realized that the photographer would get the most exercise when picturing this arch.

On the same trail is the Turret Arch.  This is another two-for-one stone since there is the little window to the left, and the huge opening on the right.  Because of the dark shadow behind him, Mark is easy to see in that biggest arch.  We love these blue skies and morning sun lighting up the red sandstone!

We saw three buses pull up in the parking lot, so we made a run for the last arch in this area--Double Arch.  These two giant spans are joined at one end. You can see that Mark got the most exercise (again), and he beat the bus-loads of foreign travelers to get this picture all alone under the arches.  We don't know how the bus drivers get all those people loaded on a bus so early in the morning, but we are impressed by the rigid schedules these bus travelers keep.

Those overhead arches are massive!

Our last stop this morning was to Balanced Rock.  Because it is on the main road of the park, close to 100% of all visitors will stop here.  It is dwarfed by the other rock formations around it, so in this picture it looks quite small.

That is why we try to sneak a person into each picture, just to bring scale to these "tiny" formations.  Denisa read that Balanced Rock is basically the size of three buses.  That's funny, all of those travelers and their buses at the last stop could have been balanced over Denisa's head.

It wasn't even noon, but it was getting warm and the park was getting crowded.  We had hiked several miles and had wandered through some awesome wonders.  It was time to hunker down in the motor home for a nap and a nice meal.  Have we mentioned lately that we love this retirement life we are leading?