ARCHES

Southern Utah, east or west has gorgeous scenery and lots of interesting places to explore. Chuck and I spent Monday in Moab, and more particularly Arches National Park.

Some of the rock formations made from sandstone were so fascinating......

To me, this one looked like Nefertiti.

This is balancing rock, for obvious reasons.

This is known as the "Three Gossips"

Although we were told that geologic arches are rare, Arches National Park has over 200 of them. We hiked out to a number of them, hiking over 8 miles that day.

I forgot the name of this one.

This is "Landscape Arch". The public was allowed to walk underneath it until 1991 when a large slab broke off and fell to the ground, narrowly missing about 6 people who were standing underneath. Now this is as close as you can get.

This is the famous "Delicate Arch", the image of which has come to represent southern Utah. It even appears on the Utah License plate.

That is Chuck standing underneath it. You are able to walk right up to, and under this arch, although the terrain behind it drops off very sharply.

Until a couple of years ago people were allowed to climb it. That ended when rock climbers got to the top and dropped ropes over the side that were tied around the top and jumped off making it a giant swing. Someone miscalculated the depth of the drop and a girl jumped off tied to the rope and hit the ground and died. 

Chuck got fancy and risked his life by walking to the rear of the arch to catch the setting sun shining through.

Petrified sand dunes- you can see where the sand was swirled by the wind and then solidified.

The weather was pretty volatile that day. At times roads in the park were closed due to flooding. The resulting clouds were gorgeous....

this one looked like an atomic mushroom cloud

The scenery was mind-blowing every where you looked.