 |
| Delicate Arch |
After visiting Colorado National Monument, we headed on the
Arches National Park, one of the most amazing places on this planet.
 |
| Archview Campground |
We had not been able to get a campsite in Arches National
Park (it is a very popular park and you really, really have to plan in
advance), so we stayed at a commercial campground, Archview RV Resort and
Campground, just north of the park on Highway 191 (don't believe GPS, which puts in in the town of Moab).
Archview is basically a big gravel lot with a scattering of trees and pull in spots. Serviceable, but lacking privacy and charm (except the cool, but inexplicable, barn and highway sign, left).
I have found that “RV Resorts” are designed for people who just want to park one of those behemoths and do most of their “camping” indoors.
 |
| Home, sweet home |
There were some fairly high winds, which
turned the gravel into a sandstorm. And, I wasn't sure if the little tent would stay put. It did.
We didn’t do much there but sleep and shower. And, Archview does have some very nice showers. It also has pay showers for people not camping there; nice to know if you do snag a spot in the National Park, which has no showers.
We didn’t do much there but sleep and shower. And, Archview does have some very nice showers. It also has pay showers for people not camping there; nice to know if you do snag a spot in the National Park, which has no showers.
Our first foray into the park pointed out just how popular
Arches has become. There was a 15-30-minute wait to get in through the entrance
gate. It would help if there were a lane
for pass holders!
 |
| Big crowds |
Located in eastern Utah adjacent to the Colorado River and
four miles north of Moab, Arches National Park It is home to more than 2,000
natural sandstone arches, including the iconic Delicate Arch.
This is the
highest density of natural arches anywhere in the world. Arches also has a wide
array of other formations, including mesas, fins, spires, monoliths, balanced
rocks, slot canyons and petrified dunes.
 |
| Delicate Arch |
 |
| Formations |
The park consists of 76,679 acres of high desert located in
the Colorado Plateau. Its highest elevation is 5,653 feet at Elephant Butte,
and the lowest is 4,085 feet at the Visitor Center by the entrance. You experience the bulk of the rise
immediately after entering the park when you drive up a steep road with great
overlooks. The park receives an average
of less than 10 inches of rain per year.
 |
| Spectacular! |
Administered by the National Park Service, Arches was a National
Monument from 1929 to 1971, when Congress designated it a National Park.
Arches lies above an underground salt bed thousands of feet thick in places that was deposited some 300 million years ago when a sea flowed into the region and then evaporated. Over millions of years, the salt bed was covered with debris eroded from the Uncompahgre Uplift to the northeast and two layers of sandstone – the Navajo and the Entrada – were deposited.
Then, more than 5,000 feet of younger sediments were deposited, only to be mostly eroded away. The weight of this cover caused the salt bed below to liquefy and thrust up layers of rock into salt domes. This caused faults to occur, followed by whole sections of rock subsiding into the areas between the domes, in some places turning almost on edge.
 |
| Impressive! |
 |
| Unbelievable! |
 |
| Fins |
Some collapsed. Others survived with missing sections
and eventually became the famous arches. This dynamic continues today.
In 2008,
Wall Arch, which had been a popular arch to hike under, collapsed. Caty and I
had been there just a few weeks earlier. I wonder how many other arches will
collapse over my lifetime and how long Delicate Arch will last.
To protect the park’s fragile structures, climbing Balanced
Rock or arches with an opening more than three-feet wide is banned by park
regulations. Climbing on other features in the park is allowed but regulated. I also think it's crazy -- but, that's just me.
 |
| Climber |
Humans have occupied the region since the last ice age
10,000 years ago. Fremont people and Ancient Pueblo People lived there up until
about 700 years ago. Spanish missionaries encountered Ute and Paiute tribes in
the area when they first came through in 1775, but the first European-Americans
to attempt settlement were the Mormon Elk Mountain Mission in 1855, who soon
abandoned the area. Ranchers, farmers and prospectors later settled Moab in the
neighboring Riverine Valley in the 1880s. Word of the beauty of the surrounding
rock formations spread beyond the settlement as a possible tourist destination.
Arches was first brought to the attention of the National Park Service by Frank Wadleigh, passenger traffic manager of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad.
 |
| Pretty colors |
Wadleigh was impressed and suggested to Park Service Director Stephen Mather that the area be made a National Monument.
 |
| Nature scenes |
A succession of government investigators examined the area, often
confused about the precise location. In the process, the name "Devil's
Garden" was transposed to an area on the opposite side of Salt Valley, the
original Devil's Garden was omitted and another area known locally as "The
Windows" was added. Designation as a National Monument was supported by
the Park Service beginning in 1926 but was resisted by President Calvin Coolidge's administration.
 |
| The Park has grown over the years |
In 1938, Franklin Roosevelt enlarged Arches to protect additional scenic features and permit development of tourist facilities.
President Dwight Eisenhower made a small adjustment in 1960 to accommodate a new road alignment and, in early 1969, President Lyndon Johnson signed a proclamation substantially enlarging the park. Two years later, President Richard Nixon signed legislation enacted by Congress which significantly reduced the total area but changed its status to a National Park.
 |
| Multiple views |
During our time there, I took several short hikes. The
weather was totally schizophrenic – hot and sunny, windy and rainy, cool and
windy, cloudy and dry, repeat, repeat – so, I didn’t set out on anything
particularly long. I didn’t want to get caught in a deluge with my camera gear.
 |
| Changing weather |
I did a quick hike out to Sand Dune Arch, so called because
of the deep sand around its base.
 |
| Sand Dune Arch |
I was going to go on to Broken Arch, which
isn’t really broken, but rain forced me to turn back. I could see it in the distance, however.
 |
| Broken Arch |
The longest (and hottest) hike I did take was Park Avenue ...
 |
| Park Avenue |
Park Avenue is a
mile-long trail that follows the bottom of a canyon past some of the park's most
well-known monoliths, including the Three Gossips ...
 |
| It looks like three medieval ladies |
The Organ ...
 |
| A stone pipe organ |
Queen
Nefertiti ...
 |
| Yes, it really looks Egyptian |
And the Tower of Babel ...
 |
| A towering tower |
While
hiking, I encountered a couple who were looking at what initially appeared to
be a round sandstone medallion with an abstract drawing of a bird on it mounted
on a cliff. Under closer inspection, it turned out to be a hole in the rock,
looking through to shadows that created the bird image . On my return, the
shadow looked even more like a bird (yep, that's the same view with different sun angles) ...
 |
| In person, it was even weirder |
Cool, huh?
I also saw just a few animals, including some black-throated
sparrows …
 |
| A common bird in the desert |
 |
| Pretty colors |
 |
| These guys are everywhere |
Another hike took me past Tunnel Arch – a very cool arch
high up in the rock wall ...
 |
| Tunnel Arch |
Then, hiked on to Pine Tree Arch, named after the pines that grow
at its base. That was a fairly crowded hike and I had to wait awhile until
oblivious fellow hikers moved out of the way so I could get a clean shot ...
 |
| Popular for photos |
It
took me several tries to do this hike because it lies within Devils Garden, a
very popular spot with several trail heads and, the first few times I went, there
were NO parking spaces. NONE. This is one of the reasons that Arches is one of
the Parks the National Park Service is studying for restricted admission,
perhaps even requiring advance reservations.
 |
| Foreboding sky |
I did not hike to Delicate Arch this time, but I have in the
past (that's me beneath the Arch to give you an idea of its immense size).
This 60-foot-tall freestanding natural arch is the most
widely recognized landmark in Arches National Park and is depicted on Utah
license plates and on a postage stamp commemorating Utah's centennial
anniversary of admission to the Union in 1996.
It’s really better to do the Delicate Arch hike early in the morning or late in the
day because the trail has limited shade. Also, impending storms made it look a
little iffy the day I was there. But, there were a lot of people up around the arch, all easily removed by Photoshop (do you see any people in my photos?)!
 |
| That's me under the arch |
The torch relay for the 2002
Winter Olympics even passed through it.
Because of its distinctive shape, the arch was known as
"the Chaps" and "the Schoolmarm's Bloomers" by local
cowboys.
It was given its current name by Frank Beckwith, leader of the Arches
National Monument Scientific Expedition, who explored the area in the winter of
1933-1934. Oddly, Delicate Arch wasn’t a part of the original National Monument
in 1929; it was added when the monument was enlarged in 1938.
In the 1950s, the NPS investigated the possibility of
applying a clear plastic coating to the arch to protect it from further erosion
and eventual destruction. The idea was ultimately abandoned as impractical and
contrary to NPS principles.
In the past, I have also hiked to the Delicate Arch Overlook, which would be even worse in a storm because it is across exposed slickrock. You just don’t want to mess with lightning, so I didn't go this time.
 |
| Kit Fox, 2012 |
I spent a bit of time at the viewpoint near the parking lot,
looking for a Kit Fox den I had seen in 2012.
I knew it was a long shot, but
ya gotta try.
The vegetation and landscape had changed so much since then,
possibly due to some flooding a few years ago, that I could find anything that
looked like a den.
While there, I was fascinated by the blue-green soil –
really hard to capture in photographs – that reflected a high concentration of
iron in the soil. It is red in the rock and blue in the soil.
 |
| Green dirt |
I also spent quite a bit of time at the Fiery Furnace
Overlook. A natural labyrinth of narrow passages between sandstone walls, the
Fiery Furnace is a popular hiking destination that requires either a hiking
permit or a ranger-guided tour. According to the Park Service, this is because getting
lost is a real possibility and because the environment is too fragile to handle
a large number of hikers. Caty and I have talked about doing the hike. We just
haven’t done it yet. I guess I should hurry before my knees give out.
 |
| Fiery Furnace |
I have discovered over several recent trips that daytime in
the desert is very often a bust for wildlife viewing. Arches bore this out. I did spend some time photographing Turkey Vultures ...
 |
| They picked a pretty perch |
 |
| Ditto here |
Plus, a Western Whiptail Lizard …
 |
| A haven for lizards |
That was it!
On this trip, Scott learned that, although it is illegal to fly drones in National Parks and National Monuments administered by the National Park Service, you can fly them on lands under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management. That includes BLM-managed National Monuments (don’t ask why, but some National Monuments are managed by the BLM; some aren’t). The cool news: the BLM manages some gorgeous places. So, he got some great footage on BLM land along the Colorado River just outside of Moab, Utah.
What follows is a tiny slice of Scott's drone footage.
The road along the river, which is an alternate route to and from the park from I-70, is beautiful, dotted with riverside campground. Perhaps next time we will camp there.
On this trip, Scott learned that, although it is illegal to fly drones in National Parks and National Monuments administered by the National Park Service, you can fly them on lands under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management. That includes BLM-managed National Monuments (don’t ask why, but some National Monuments are managed by the BLM; some aren’t). The cool news: the BLM manages some gorgeous places. So, he got some great footage on BLM land along the Colorado River just outside of Moab, Utah.
What follows is a tiny slice of Scott's drone footage.
The road along the river, which is an alternate route to and from the park from I-70, is beautiful, dotted with riverside campground. Perhaps next time we will camp there.
 |
| Near, but not in, the Park |
It was a brief trip, but every time we can visit Arches National Park, we are rewarded. This is a place of extraordinary beauty that
drives home how critical it is to protect and preserve this nation’s national
wonders.
 |
| Arches National Park -- a favorite |
No comments:
Post a Comment