The Red, Red Rocks of Utah

Thursday, 9 July, 2015

Our family of four at Arches National Park

Today we had high hopes--wake up early (for us), hike the Hanging Lake (I saw a feature online about it), then hike the Canyonlands National Park (NP) before checking into our hotel in Moab, Utah.  Well, we got up early, and the weather was good.  So good that the state of Colorado was doing road construction.  And the westbound lanes of the interstate were combined and moved to one half of the eastbound lanes (they combined into one lane also).  Only for about 10 miles, maybe less.  Well, in the middle of those was our exit for Hanging Lake.  There is only one parking lot--right off the interstate.  It is only one mile each way and we've heard it is extremely arduous hiking, but we had decided to give it a go to see the promised gorgeous view.   Well, not without an exit.  So we kept driving, stopped once for gas and Subway for lunch, and continued into Utah.  At the border, we stopped to switch drivers and followed the trail to see the view.  Beautiful!

At the border of Colorado and Utah

Shelby

Joshua

As we drove into Utah, we saw lightning at the edges of the sky to our right and our left.  As we got closer to Canyonlands, it started raining really hard.  So we pulled over, looked at the map and decided to drive to our hotel in Moab (pronounced Moe-ahb--long o, soft a, for those that want to know).  The rock and soil here are red, so red water was flooding some of the street from all of the rain.

By 6:00 the rain stopped, so we decided to go to Arches NP (which was planned for tomorrow, but was closer).  We got there and didn't even need our park pass--the gate was open and the sign on the window said that the park was open to go on in.  So we did.  It was getting late, so we couldn't do as much hiking as we would have liked.  We did a few short ones in the waning light.  Here's the science (for those that want to skip ahead, feel free):  sandstone and salt in the rock combined with colliding tectonic plates created fins.  Fins are very narrow rocks which then thin from weathering.  The thinning eventually wears through and gaps appear.  These gaps become larger and create arches--which is the reason for the name Arches National Park.

The fins

Joshua

looking up at an arch

Randy, Johsua, and Shelby

Shelby and Joshua--Joshua is having trouble holding that heavy rock up!

looking up at an arch

The waning daylight

We continued until darkness fell.  We weren't able to go on the longer hikes since we didn't have time so we missed many of the arches.  One of them we couldn't even get to the viewing area because the road was closed due to flooding (from the rain).  We stopped at Pizza Hut for dinner on our way into town, but it was too late for dining room service and we took take-out back to our room.  Tomorrow we will hike some of Canyonlands before driving on to Page, Arizona.