Saturday, June 21st – Arches National Park

We loved Arches National Park..unfortunately, being June when we visited, it was very hot!  Over 100 degrees on the day we were here.  We couldn’t do a lot of the longer trails, because of the heat factor.  We managed to do some hiking, but we want to come back during a cooler month to do some of the longer trails, like the one that takes you right up to Delicate Arch.

Arches National Park is a U.S. national park in southern Utah. It is known for preserving over 2,000 natural sandstone arches, including the world-famous Delicate Arch, in addition to a variety of unique geological resources and formations.

The park is located near Moab, Utah, and is 119 square miles (310 km2) in size. Its highest elevation is 5,653 feet (1,723 m) at Elephant Butte, and its lowest elevation is 4,085 feet (1,245 m) at the visitor center. Since 1970, forty-three arches have toppled because of erosion. The park receives 10 inches (250 mm) of rain a year on average.

The area, administered by the National Park Service, was originally designated as a national monument on April 12, 1929. It was redesignated a national park on November 12, 1971.

Among the notable features of the park are:

* Delicate Arch — a lone-standing arch which has become a symbol of Utah

* Balanced Rock — a large balancing rock, the size of three school buses
* Double Arch — two arches that share a common end
* Landscape Arch — a very thin, very long arch over 300 feet (100 m); the largest in the park
* Fiery Furnace — an area of maze-like narrow passages and tall rock columns
* Devil’s Garden — with many arches and columns scattered along a ridge
* Dark Angel — a free-standing column of dark stone at the end of the Devil’s Garden trail
* Courthouse Towers — a collection of tall stone columns

* Petrified dunes — petrified remnants of sand dunes blown from the ancient lakes that covered the area.
* Wall Arch —located along the popular Devils Garden Trail. Collapsed sometime on August 4-5, 2008

To view all the pictures from Arches National Park, click here!