| 3 Canyon de Chelly |
| Canyonland NP 4 |
| Index |
April 13th, 2013: Arches National Park, Utah.
The next day Chris drove the Prius to try it out, and the three us rambled around Arches National Park. The arches are found in clusters in different areas of the park, so Chris drove us from one cluster to another, and at each place we got out to walk around and see the arches "up close and personal".
The beautiful stone arches are caused by erosion of ancient sandstone “fins”. The fins were extrusions of harder rock left over by millennia of wind and water erosion of the caprock, and the arches form when the rock at the base of the fin weathers away first. One complex of arches even had two arches converging in a single tower of rock, which was beautiful to look at but extraordinarily difficult to photograph!
Several other arches ranging from quite solid, almost frumpy looking arches to the graceful "Delicate Arch" and the very thin, quite fragile-looking “Landscape Arch”.
And the landscape we were walking through was fascinating as well, with lots of reddish rocks in a basically desert landscape. However, some small trees and bushes tried to hang on even in that dusty, arid environment.
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