Arches and Canyons, oh my!

So, with a brand-new front CV axle in tow, the car was finally ready to leave the land of Brigham Young and move on to new sights and sounds. While we had originally planned to spend two nights in southern Utah, we had to shave that down to one, to make it to Las Vegas in time for our regularly scheduled activities.
Utah is a very different place from North to South. In the North, the Rockies give way to more rounded hills (kind of like Northern California), but in the South, different forces acting on different stone give it an entirely different appearance. And by entirely different, I mean entirely different... much different than the rounded hills of Salt Lake, different that the glacier-covered Rockies of the Grand Tetons, and even different from the pastel-colored mounds in the Badlands. We're talking about as-different-as-the-surface-of-Mars type stuff here.
We got to our first stop, Arches National Park, a few hours before sunset, which was a blessing in disguise, since it mostly saved us from 100-degree weather and very little humidity. The warnings all over the park about drinking enough water gently point out that this is the desert here.
And not just any desert, but a desert with thousands of different sandstone formations, which have been carved, cracked, and compacted into many different red-hued spires, towering walls, and, of course, arches.
They claim to have identified over 2,000 separate arches in the park, which is not too hard to believe. Many of them can be see from the single road that leads through the park, although some are down short trails.





We headed to the back of the park first, to Devil's Garden. There are a number of arches here, including the landscape arch, which is the longest arch in the world. Walking down the trail, your first glimpse of it isn't really that impressive, but continuing further down the trail lets you get a lot closer, and the thing is simply amazing up close.





We also found the Wall Arch, or what was left of it, since it fell down a few months ago.





By this point, sunlight was fading fast, so we headed off to see perhaps the most famous arch, Delicate Arch. This arch is not the longest, or highest, or tallest, but is completely freestanding, just like a doorway. We got there just in time to take some pictures before we lost all of the light.







The next day we got up and finished our time in Arches. We hiked up to Double Arch, one of the few were you can actually hike up under the arch (at least 'legally'). Double arch was one of our favorites since it's (as the name suggests) two separate arches that share a common pillar but are offset from each other about ninety degrees.



Lastly, we took the quick, short hike on the other side of the parking area to the Turret and Window arches, which both made for some nice pictures.



After Arches, we took a short detour to see Canyonlands National Park. Just like Yellowstone and Grand Teton, Canyonlands was a virtual ghost town when compared to Arches NP. However, even though it's only about twenty miles, it might as well be a world away. While Arches is basically desert with stone features jutting above the landscape, Canyonlands is much the reverse, with the Colorado River winding through its belly. It's tempting to compare it to the Grand Canyon, which is at the other end of the string of parklands that encapsulate the Colorado, but whereas the Grand Canyon is one giant, long, linear canyon, Canyonlands NP consists of a large plateau -- the Island in the Sky -- that is accessible only by a small neck of land. When you're on the island, there are canyons on every side, and the view is breathtaking. Unfortunately, what was also breathtaking was a large thunderstorm rolling through the region, which, when you're sitting on top of a plateau where the largest tree is only a few feet tall, doesn't exactly seem like the best place to be. Thus, our pictures from Canyonlands do not really show the grandeur of the park.



Perhaps the most interesting feature of the Canyonlands is the canyon-within-a-canyon. About a thousand feet down from the plateau exists a shelf, but within that shelf are a second set of canyon walls, such that the river is another thousand feet below that.



After the rain left us with little more to see in the Canyonlands, we headed off on the six hour drive to Las Vegas. We took I-70 from Moab to its western terminus where it joins I-15. Although this is the most desolate stretch of road we saw on our entire trip, it was also probably the most mind-blowing scenery of the entire trip... and it's all free.






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