Arches National Park; Moab, Utah

Moab, Utah, is a haven for mountain bikers and ATV riders. The myriad off-road trails cut through red sandstone known as slickrock. But Arches National Park, five miles north of Moab, is reserved for hikers and bikers to explore petrified sand dunes and rock formations known as fins.





Fins sometimes become arches when the salt bed, deposited 300 million years ago when a sea covered the Colorado Plateau, erodes from harder rock layers.



Many of the park's 2000 arches can only been seen by hiking to them. On the day of our visit, it was so cold and windy that we toured the 18-miles scenic drive by car. We were able to see the most famous arch, Delicate Arch, from about 3/4 of a mile away.



Balanced rock will make you scratch your head, trying to figure out how it seems to defy gravity!



The Cove of Caves contains arches and some future arches-in-progress.



The La Sal Mountains provide a glorious background.

Dead Horse Point State Park; Moab, Utah

The concentration of national parks and monuments in the "Four Corners" region of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah speaks to the geology of the area. Canyons and mesas sculpted by the Colorado River and erosion of sandstone by ice, water, and wind have created a unique landscape. This region is known as the "Grand Circle". Some parks, including the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and Cedar Breaks, were closed in early April. At 8000' elevations, they were still snowed in. But while in Utah, after Zion and Bryce, we decided to visit Moab, gateway to two more parks - Arches and Canyonlands.

Our home base was Dead Horse Point State Park. Dead Horse Point sits atop a 6000' elevation plateau left between canyons carved by the Green River and the Colorado River.



The view from the promontory of the point is extraordinary. Two thousand feet above the Colorado River, Canyonlands National Park goes on seemingly forever.





In the other direction, a view of the snow-capped La Sal Mountains. These mountains also provide the backdrop to the formations of Arches National Park, our next stop.