We headed to Arches National Park early in the morning, but the weather didn’t cooperate with us today. It was raining last night and it seemed like it was going to rain again. The dark red rocks looked beautiful and enigmatic, but not as bright and colorful as in the sunlight. We payed the park admission and proceeded on the winding road to the park passing the visitor center.
While the park is most well-known for having over 2000 registered natural sandstone arches, including the famous Delicate Arch and Landscape Arch, there is more to see than just the arches. Here is Park Avenue, one of the first stops after entering Arches National Park.
We stopped literally at the first sign “Moab Fault”. Here is a panoramic view of the highway near the entrance from there.
The sign below explains the geology of the Moab Fault. The picture can be enlarged by clicking on it. In short, the sign informs that Moab Fault – a shifting of rock layers caused by the surface break 6 million years ago. The highway below parallels this fracture line, called the Moab Fault.
We red the sign, observed the Moab Fault fracture line, took some pictures of each other, and continued our drive through the park.
Our next stop was the Park Avenue lookout. The advantage being early is that it wasn’t crowded yet. The sheer walls of this canyon reminds early visitors of buildings lining a big city street. Rising majestically, these geological “skyscrapers” tell the story of the Entrada Sandstone. The real Park Avenue is a wide boulevard in Manhattan Island in New York City, with soaring skyscrapers on either side of the avenue.
Next, we stopped at the Courthouse Towers. This place provides a panoramic view of the surrounding landmarks. The signs explain what to look for and the location of each landmark, which is very helpful. Here is one of those signs.
This is a telephoto shot of La Sal Mountain covered with clouds far away.
Courthouse Towers encompass the following rock formations (from the right to the left): The Organ, a piece of Tower of Babel, sticking out behind the Organ, Sheep Rock and Three Gossips. Monolithic spires and ridges of rock standing isolated in largely flat terrain of Park Avenue and Courthouse Towers have been featured in several cinema films, most famously Thelma and Louise in 1991. Here are some pictures of the curious rock formations at the Courthouse Towers.
This is a telephoto shot of the Organ rock formation.
Three Gossips.
The Sheep Rock. Surprisingly, it does look like the sheep is lying down on the rock.
The Tower of Babel rock formation is a part of the Courthouse towers.
Here we stopped at the other point of the Courthouse Towers area to take some close ups.
The sign there suggests that there was an arch in place of the sheep rock.
The road in the park is very nice with parking lots, signs and directions to the attractions and hikes along the road. Next, we stopped at the Ancient Sand Dunes, which are petrified now.
Driving further along the park’s road and enjoying the view of the gigantic rusty reddish rocks.
As we reached the Balanced Rock formation, it started raining, so we didn’t even leave a car. I just snap a picture from the car window as we were turning back to the park exit. We will return here tomorrow.
By the time we got back to Moab, it was a lunchtime. We found a really nice authentic Mexican restaurant and stopped there for lunch. The rest of the day was nice and relaxing. We needed it after our crazy schedule of the few previous days. We spent some time at the pool, did some shopping, talked via Skype with some friends and planned our activities for the next couple days in Moab.
