The following morning we were lucky enough to witness another stirring performance by Capello’s men, this time against Algeria, – god bless my sarcastic self – before heading off to Arches National Park in the hope of being cheered up. At the entrance gate we were given a park guide which did a grand job of explaining how the park’s main attractions (arches and funky rock formations) had been created over time…
On entering Arches, we were immediately greeted by a plethora of mazy cliffs and daunting rock formations, passing the La Sal Mountains Viewpoint en route to a collection of gigantic rock arrangements near the Courthouse Towers Viewpoint that included The Organ (see the first photo below with Winty and Ads in the bottom left-hand corner), Three Gossips (second image below), Sheep Rock, Tower of Babel, and Courthouse Towers… all equally impressive for vastness and structure alike.
We passed the Petrified Dunes Viewpoint before pausing at the well known and altogether more interesting Balanced Rock. It is a fifty-five foot, 3,500 tons boulder made of hard slick rock that appears to defy gravity whilst perching itself atop of a seventy-five foot pedestal of faster-eroding mudstone that has revealed itself due to the various rock layers’ contrasting rates of erosion and susceptibility to weathering over time. Eventually this will lead to the collapse of Balanced Rock, but for now it remains a highly visual example of the effects of weathering and erosion on different layers of rock (one from the Entrada Sandstone layer, the other a Dewey Bridge member of the Carmel Formation), in this instance allowing the formation of a bizarre and delightful structure; definitely something worth marvelling at…
We progressed to The Windows Section of the park, passing several small arches and other rocks, spires and pinnacles on our way round to a trail that would take in both North Window and South Window. A short and un-taxing trek later, we arrived at South Window – a massive arch that afforded cracking views into the distance of countless other arches and other curious rock formations. I found a ledge in the top right-hand corner and perched there for the best part of forty-five minutes whilst Ads and Winty chilled out further down. It was a rather relaxing way to spend part of the afternoon.
There was still time enough in the day for us to get aggressively hassled by another park ranger (this time for being 5mph too fast) and to make our way up to Delicate Arch, another of Arches National Park’s famed landmarks. We tackled the shorter trail (getting lazy, too many Big Macs) which took us up to the Upper Delicate Arch Viewpoint, which gave a decent view of the arch, albeit not a close-up. This arch, too, is rather precarious and a bizarre work of nature…
I left Arches with a tinge of sadness, knowing that this was the last of southern Utah’s National Parks that we would visit. The six days that we spent in Zion, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Canyonlands, and Arches are amongst the most memorable days I have experienced. It is a combination of the vastness, the colours, the history, the rock layers, the bizarre rock formations, the crazy arches, the crazier hoodoos, ancient petroglyphs, the delightful and rewarding trails, and the general immersion of oneself in a daunting landscape that had previously seemed alien and almost entirely unfathomable. You just don’t get places such as these in England…
