May 28 - Touring Day - Arches National Park

Slept in this morning until 7:00 a.m. Quite a treat!

Wonderful breakfast in the Aarchway Inn. (That is not a typo. It may be so it would be the first listing alphabetically in the Yellow Pages.) The scrambled eggs were excellent! There were lots of Europeans staying here on tour; heard French and German being spoken.

Left the Aarchway about 8:45 a.m. to tour Arches National Park. Just a maybe 4 mile drive from the motel. Got in free because of my Golden Age Pass. We drove past the Visitor Center, electing to stop there on the way out. There is one main road through Arches, about 18 miles long. There are many paved turn-out viewpoints along the road. We stopped at most of them. First was the Courthouse Towers, with the Three Gossips, Sheep Rock, and the Tower of Babel. Someone sure had creativity in naming these red sandstone formations!

Next area was the Petrified Dunes, low rolling mounds. The Great Wall came next, followed by the Rock Pinnacles. Balanced Rock was impressive. Took a side road out to the Windows Section. It had the first major grouping of arches. To qualify as an "official stone arch," a hole must have an opening at least three feet in any one direction. Some arches are called "windows" if the opening is high on a rock wall or fin. Some arches are called windows if they "frame" a particularly good view of the landscape below. I am pretty sure there are at least 2000 cataloged arches in the Park. We did not go out to see iconic Delicate Arch. The Fiery Furnace with all its fins of sandstone was very interesting. More arches (Skyline, Broken, Sand Dune, Pine Tree, and Tunnel) were in the Devils Garden section.

New arches are being formed and old ones are eroding and weathering slowly. The most dramatic recent change occurred in 1991 when a rock slab 60 feet long, 11 feet wide, and four feet thick fell from the underside of Landscape Arch, leaving an even thinner ribbon of rock.

Retraced the drive back down to the Visitors Center. Looked at the displays, souvenirs, and saw a 15 minute film about Arches. It was designated a National Monument in 1929. It became a National Park in 1971.

Back in Moab, we did a little shopping at the local Kroger affiliate, City Market. Lunch back in the motel room, then a nap before the daunting task of writing yesterday's Daily Message which took 2 1/2 hours via "hunt & peck" on this Samsung Galaxy. Messages may be a bit shorter due to time constraints and my novice status.

Dinner at Denny's again, then another 1 1/2 hours on this message. Keeping everyone in the loop and "riding along with us is a true labor of love!

With love,
A tired Marie