Tuesday 9/20  Today we headed for Arches National Park, the most famous of the national parks in Utah.  It has the world's largest collection of natural sandstone arches, over 2,000 cataloged arches.  But it also has an astounding amount of balanced rocks, towering fins (thin vertical slabs of rock), spires, domes, petrified sand dunes and rock formations that inspire your imagination.  Everyone sees something different in these unreal structures.  We saw elephants, Russian Cossacks, Santa Claus, the Three Kings, and many more, too numerous to mention.  The Rangers said that water and ice, extreme temperatures and underground salt movement is responsible for the creation of this amazing  rock scenery.  On a clear day you can see 100 million years of history there.  There were also many International people to visit with, French, German, Japanese, Canadian.  We even visited with a couple from Holland!

There are many hikes available at Arches, ranging from very easy to very difficult.  We stuck with easy to moderate.  The moderate one we did was a half-mile nearly straight up, sandy path,  over and around boulders, some stone steps, some slickrock, to view the Delicate Arch.  I was really sucking wind by the time we got to the top of that one! And then we had to go back down!

My two favorite arches that we saw were the Double Arch and the Sand Dune Arch.  Both involved some hiking, but nothing as strenuous as the Delicate Arch Trail.

Double Arch

Delicate Arch

                    

Did I say sucking wind!!!

Sand Dune Arch

                                                                                         

Yes, I fit!

              

Skyline Arch

                       

Unbelievably, there was a disabled Civil War soldier, John Wesley Wolfe and his son Fred settled there in the late 1880s.  We saw the weathered log cabin, the root cellar, and corral of the ranch they operated for nearly 20 years.  What a harsh life that must have been.