Arches National Park

After visiting The Grand Canyon we headed into Utah, and were able to see more beautiful scenery.

I have spent time in northern Utah around Salt Lake City, Provo, and Park City, but never on the Eastern edge.  It's absolutely beautiful.

We stayed in Moab and visited Arches National Park the next morning.

Of all the planning and packing I did, the only thing I didn't take was my camera battery charger.

Truth is - I never run out of battery so it didn't occur to me to take it.

So all of these are iPhone photos, and I think they turned out OK, despite the lack of a good camera.

Arches National Park is absolutely gorgeous.  David said it rivaled the Grand Canyon.

I'm so glad we decided to spend time there before continuing on our journey.

We did a little hiking and lots of wandering around, enjoying the scenery.

Thomas was about to sneeze

The park is 77,000 acres and sits on top of a salt bed, which is the main cause of the formation of arches, spires, balanced rocks, and eroded monoliths.

Here we're looking at the result of the Moab Fault that occurred millions of  years ago.

Learning about the faults and erosion

Everywhere we looked - beautiful rock formations

Two climbing monkeys

A balanced rock 

 Monoliths

"Three Gossips"

"Sheep Rock"

Exploring down the salt paths

"Balanced Rock"

Thomas read on a sign that hikers build "sigils" along the path so that you know you are heading in the right direction.  It's usually a little pile of rocks.  Thomas liked to add a couple of smaller rocks to the top of the sigils we passed.

World-famous "Delicate Arch" off in the distance.  We did not do the full hike to it.  And this photo does nothing to show you how beautiful it is and why it's so famous!

Here is a much better example!

source

"Fiery Furnace" - a collection of narrow sandstone structures

There are more than 2500 arches in Arches National Park.  It's really gorgeous and a definite highlight of our trip!