We were here 20 years ago, to Moab and the surrounding parks. Of course the first thing we did was to look for is the home made root beer they made in Moab.
Arches is a marvel. The geology is one of a kind in our world. After the steep, steep switch backed climb up the cliff we pass through two giant rocks and another world opens up. The easiest way to describe is that we have gone back to the age of the dinosaurs. Wide expanse of open country, seeing a hundred miles in places and giant monuments of rock rising up hundreds of feet into the air. Some are massive structures miles wide, towering over us, some skinny towers and everything in between.
We are not up a minute and I pull over, drawn by the sight of the tops of fascinating rocks. A short steep walk to an overlook and I am overwhelmed by the sight. It is so grand, so powerful and real, I can hardly breathe. Not since the top of a vista in Big Bend, (Sotol) have I felt such power and expansion.
On both sides in front of us massive lines of rock march along for 2 miles. The two lines angled in converging together to form a triangle of flatness. A gap at the point in front of us, a hundred yard wide showed more monster rock beyond. On the right line of rock this massive structure is topped with thin plates of rock and stand impossibly 60 feet wide and a hundred high. They look 5 feet thick. At first these details are not appreciated. The first effect is simply gut. I can’t explain why this scene is so powerful. (At the end of our visit, we returned to this spot, I wanted to see if I felt the same. We had seen amazing formations, but that same feeling returned. I would like to live there.)
Its hard to describe what we saw in Arches, maybe the pictures will give some tiny clue. Truly, you will have to see for yourself. 27 miles of road every turn of the road, every hill over taken and we see another miracle. Some places were thick with rock, hundreds of spires rising up in points, others with waves of fabric like rock sticking up like sheets on a line, only half buried. Other places lone and collections of towers rose, some out of the dirt and some atop huge bases of stone.
Then there were the arches. Worn by wind and water, the soft rock falls away and forms the most amazing windows in the sky. A few we could see far away from the road, but most we had to work for, walking deep into the rising and falling desert passed wonderful formations in there own right, to come on the space of blue sky, the reddish brown rock all around it. Some seemed delicate and some would last another thousand years. I climbed to one and stood in the center, the rock above my head 50 feet. Suddenly I became terrified and had to move. My intellect told me it was hundreds of years before the arch could fall, but I could not stay.
We went to Sand Dune Arch on the recommendation of a ranger. I asked for a place where the trail was rock close on both sides. This place was all that and more. Hundreds of children. We walked in through tight rock walls, winding this way and that and then it opened up to a room with many small side shoots of trails and a large hill of sand rose up to massive rock with a small arch as an entrance to the other half of the room. Here, unplanned was a multitude of playing children. Some running, some rolling, all screaming with delight. I could see older children on rock ledges off higher in the rock. The parents stood by in awe, unexpected daycare at their feet.
These sights still in our heads we drove back to our campsite. There is nowhere in this area you can get away from the beauty. The 6 mile drive to our site is up an amazing canyon with 1000 foot cliffs on either side, the Colorado river splashing beside us the whole way up. Our site is 30 feet from the water.
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