Postcard from the Arches

The Journey Continues…

After three great days at the Needles in Canyonlands National Park, I took the 34 mile drive out of the canyons to connect with Utah Highway 191…then north towards Moab. My goal was to visit The Arches National Park, a park of immense natural beauty that I had only seen in pictures. I had looked forward to this visit for a long time…and I was not disappointed.

The entrance to the Park lies just beyond Moab. I stopped first at the visitor’s center just beyond the entrance to get the lay of the land, so to speak. Just beyond the entrance, the road into the park takes you up and up and up, over 1,000 feet, into the main park. Immediately, one starts seeing magnificent vistas with towering walls, soaring pinnacles, massive fins and giant balanced rocks. And of course, there are arches...well over 2,000 of them if you can believe that. It is truly a red rock wonderland.

On my first day, I drove the length of the park road, all the way to the end. There lies the entrance to Devil’s Garden, and, the park’s one and only campground. I staked my claim to a great campsite, then headed back down the road to see what I could see this first day. What I saw took my breath away. I saw many arches visible from the road. There were also many side roads that took me to other sites like the one pictured here. This is one of the parks most famous sites, Double Arch. All around me were massive rock formations and more arches. One of the most amazing places on the planet!

Without getting into great detail, arches are formed by a combination of forces, mostly water, ice and gravity. Wind plays little or no part. Water erodes the sandstone slowly, breaking down the molecular structure of the sandstone...ice expands and contracts inside the rock, weakening it even further, and gravity brings down portions of the rock where the molecular bonds have been weakened beyond the ability of the rock to hold it together. As the park only gets 8"-10" of rain per year, this is obviously a very slow process.

Arches take a long, long time to form…thousands of years at the least. They are born, then form, then, eventually die. For the process of arch creation is relentless. Eventually the arch is weakened enough by the process that parts start falling off. Then, one day, it just collapses and is no more. A couple of months before I took this photo, the famous Wall Arch collapsed. One day it was there, the next day it was gone. Since 1977, 43 arches have collapsed. Parts of the very famous Landscape Arch fell off and were captured on a video camera by a tourist who just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Everywhere in the park you can see remnants of great giant arches that are gone.

I spent a number of days in the park visiting all the sites that I could get to by car. One day I took a ranger-led hike through the Fiery Furnace, a labyrinth of canyons that one can easily get lost in, which is why I went with a ranger. The place is badly named as it is one of the coolest spot in the park on hot summer days. I also took a long walk by myself through the Devil’s Garden, all the way to Landscape Arch and other interesting arches and rock formations. Well worth the hike.

As for photography, you can imagine I took a ton of photos. My photographic guide book told me where the best places were to photograph some of the sites and whether it was best at sunrise or sunset. You just can’t beat the wonderful light these two times of day yield. If you would like to see more of my best photos of the Arches, just head to my Web Site.

I have to admit after many months on the road, one can get tired of sleeping in the back of the van and taking sponge baths to maintain some modicum of cleanliness. So, on one Sunday, craving football, a hot shower, and a soft bed, I headed into Moab to a hotel. It was wonderful. I actually stayed a couple of days so I could catch the Monday Night game. Eventually I headed back to the park’s campground…but God, those days in a hotel were wonderful! I did that occasionally while on this journey, but sometimes there were no hotels anywhere nearby, like in the Needles.

But beside The Arches, there was another nearby National Park that needed a visit. So one morning, before the sun came up, I headed there to try and capture a photo of sunlight reflecting off the inside of an arch.

Stay tuned for more…