On The Road: Delicate Arch

Probably the most well known image associated with Arches National Park is Delicate Arch.  Standing 64 feet tall and 34 feet wide, it's the largest of the 2,000+ natural sandstone arches in the park. (Look how small the Junior Editor and I look standing beneath it!) To get to the arch, you have to be willing to hike in the direct sun for 1.5 miles over slick rock and climb almost 500 feet.  The views are wonderful and the destination sublime -- well worth it!

On The Road: Arches National Park

The first stop on the Wild, Wild West Whirlwind Tour was Arches National Park in Moab, Utah. What a unique and beautiful area! Believe it or not, there are over 2,000 (yep, 2K) natural sandstone arches in the park. Some are big. Some are smaller (a park ranger said a span must measure at least 3 feet to be officially designated as an arch).  And, what's amazing...is that they all formed naturally, the result of millions of years of erosion.  

This is a portion of Double arch -- one of my favorites of all the arches we visited.  (The first photo shows why it's called Double arch.)  I love that you can walk around, under, and in some cases, through the arches, if you're daring enough to try.  It was just a 5 minute walk to reach this one.  (Other hikes can take hours.)  And, even though other tourists were there, it's such a large space it felt like we had it to ourselves.

Hiking along Devil's Garden trail, the landscape is filled with spires, towers and amazing sandstone formations.  (Nonstop photo opps!)  It gets extremely hot in Moab and we were fortunate it was only in the high 80s/low 90s (F) during our rigorous outings.  More later on the hiking at Arches!