Day 26 was a travel day from Henderson, NV to Moab, UT. It is almost 500 miles so our day was basically pack, drive, rest stops and food stops, unpack, and sleep. Not quite, but it is our longest planned driving day of the trip and we felt it.
The next day we’re back up and ready for Arches National Park. We’ll be in Moab for a few days and the parks planned are quite interesting. Moab is central to Arches National Park (120 square miles) and Canyonlands National Park (528 square miles). These are two huge parks that have incredible geography and we have one planned for each day we’re in Moab.
Duncan visited a dog park here and had fun chasing balls and playing with a couple of other dogs. Unfortunately, he ate something that bothered his throat a lot. He coughed a lot and vomited in his kennel on the way back to the hotel. Then he ate tons of dry grass and green grass and continued to cough. We actually waited until the last moment to see if one of us had to stay back with him rather than going to Arches. As it turned out, he settled down enough that we went to the park.
Arches is a large park but it has very accessible trails and views that don’t take all day to get too. We did several hikes, the first one was Balanced Rock. Not that this is the only rock that looks like it’s balancing on a pole in the park, but this is a great example of one that’s sort of on its own. While the rock looks like it is just sitting precariously on top of this column, it’s actually all one piece of rock that has different layers that are eroding at different rates.
The park has more than 2000 natural stone arches and we visited some of the easier to access ones.
Delicate Arch was a long hike to get right up next to it so we did the next best thing and got the larger view from afar. I’m no expert on geology but it must take some interesting layering to come up with a location like this where the specific landscape element is arches. If you want the scientific reason for their development please look here.
They call Arches National Park a Red Rock Wonderland. The area has been occupied/visited for about 10,000 years, since shortly after the last ice age. Around 2,000 years ago the area became home to hunter/gathers that we’ve heard of before – the ancestral Puebloans. About 700 years ago these peoples moved on and the nomadic Shoshonean peoples were here to meet the first Europeans. It is great to see so many areas with such a long history of occupation and community. It’s what has been the most educational and interesting thing on these visits to National Parks and Monuments. They have given both of us an entirely new appreciation and commitment to the National Park System.
