Hello all. I hope everyone is doing well. Mike and I are doing great. We had a bit of a bug yesterday and so we took it easy. I'm not sure if it was a virus or if we had altitude sickness. The symptoms were the same as altitude sickness, but I would have thought we would have had it before now on our trip. We have been at a high altitude for a while now. Oh well no matter, we are both fine today.
The dogs got me out of bed this morning at about 6am. I was still pretty much asleep when I opened the door to take them out. I was shocked when I opened the door. There was snow on the grass and it was snowing like crazy. So, I let Toby and Molly take care of business and I came back in and crawled back into bed and got warm and fell back to sleep. I got up again at 8 and almost all the snow was gone. The weather here seems to change frequently. I read some information on this area and it said it can get as high as 113 or as low as -20. Talk about extremes!!!
Mike and I got ready early and headed out to Arches National Park. It is only a few miles outside of Moab. On our way, we went through the town of Moab. It is a nice small town with lots of hotels, restaurants and shops for the many tourists who come here to see the sights and to do Jeep trips or ATV trips into the countryside. I had no idea this was such a tourist area.
The town of Moab is bordered on the west by red rock cliffs. When I say cliffs, I mean they are almost straight up and rugged. Everywhere you look along the cliffs, you will see huge boulders that have broken off and tumbled down. These boulders are as big as houses. In some places, they are piled on top of each other. I can't imagine what it would be like to hear or see one of them falling.
I said that there are rock cliffs on the west side of Moab. When you get near Arches, there are huge red rock cliffs on the east as well. The park service has cut a road up this east side and as you drive up, you begin to see very unusual rock formations. After you get to the top and around on the other side of the rock face, the land opens up some and there are huge rock towers and boulders all around on both sides of the road. In a few miles, the road descends into the Petrified Sand Dunes area. They are really just that - petrified sand dunes. There is an information marker that explains that these were once just regular sand dunes but that they were changed over time to become like rock. So, what you see are dunes of rock.
Some of the rock arches in the park are visible from the road, but most require a hike to see them. We did several of the hikes and I must say that I was really worn out by the end of the day. However, I am so glad we went on these hikes. We saw some incredible arches.
There is one arch called Landscape Arch that you can no longer walk under. This is because in 1991 some folks were under the arch and heard loud cracks that they described like hearing thunder. They got up and ran and were lucky to get away before a huge piece of the arch underside gave way and fell. I think the marker said the piece that fell weighed over 180 tons. This arch is very wide and very thin in the middle. According to information we read on the arches, they will erode until they eventually fall. I don't know how long this process takes, but Landscape Arch appears to be the one most likely to fall. All the other arches we saw were much thicker. I think the pictures I post will show what I am telling you here.
Tomorrow, we are leaving for the west side of Utah. We are going to visit Bryce Cannon and Zion National Park. I doubt that I will be updating the blog for a few days because we will probably be staying in state parks where I won't have wireless service.
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