We have heard wonderful things regarding Arches and boy is it absolutely wonderful! We took 2 full days to drive and hike the park. We would not want to leave any arch unseen you know.
Twin Arches called “windows” from a distance. As with most arches we saw it took a nice short hike to see it up close.
This beauty was crawling with happy visitors, us included. Cool that the NPS allows folks to climb on these fabulous rocks.
Laurie is very excited to be at Arches!
The view from directly underneath one of these massive arches.
This fabulous hoodoo is called “Balanced Rock”. I think you can see why the name is appropriate. Nature is a crazy force to be dealt with.
Nice picture of the happy couple with “Twin Arches” in the background.
This is called “The parade of elephants.” We see one for sure.
On a hike further down the road we took this picture of what we figure was a rogue elephant. Maybe he got voted off the arches island?
These two mini slot canyons were cool to walk into and, on the left, through. We suppose that the fact that it was like walking on a sandy beach is reasonable as these cliffs are mostly sandstone.
This gem is called “Landscape Arch”. The sun posed a photographic dilemma….To take a picture directly into the sun or not? We had more arches to see so no lollygagging to wait for the sun to set a bit. The kiosk near this arch showed a picture from back in the 1970s that some lucky tourist took. It showed a portion of the right side collapsing. We have been wondering how many people actually get to see a rock fall from its perch?
No arches in this picture but a mess of “fins” and “hoodoos” makes for a nice picture. These fins and hoodoos are more prevalent at Bryce Canyon NP but both parks share attributes. Bryce also had arches.
Just driving along the parks scenic roads shows how beautiful nature is with its palette.
Not sure why they named this “Delicate Arch” but it was cool to look at from a distance. We opted not to take the 2 mile hike in to see it close up as we had many other hikes on our itinerary.
Some say “If you have seen one arch you have seen them all.” We disagree. Each arch had its own character and even that character changed regularly with the ever changing angle of the suns rays.
This cute little arch is called “Tunnel Arch”. Looks like someone bored a tunnel through the mountain. This particular arch changed character constantly with the motion of the sun.
We stopped on our way out of the park to take this picture of the entrance. Evidently this spot is right on a major fault line. Hope no earthquakes wreak havoc on the delicate arches in the park. We will be back here at some point in the future.
So love following you two! Wonderful photos !