Arches National Park is located on a huge salt pad left over from the ancient sea. Sedimentary rocks lie in layers on this salt, which under their own pressure turned into rocks. Almost all of the arches are formed from the pink Entrada sandstone, unlike the orange Navajo inherent in Bryce Canyon. Sometimes both types of sandstone take part in the creation of arches, then layers of pink and orange are clearly visible on the cut. They don't overlap, they sit on top of each other. Geologists call it "layer cake". About 2 thousand arches of various shapes and sizes are registered in the park. The view of the blue sky and the surrounding hills through the arches creates a sense of an ethereal landscape and is mesmerizing.
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| Arches National Park |
General Information
The first point of visit, through which all visitors to Arch Park pass, is the Park Avenue viewpoint. Why is New York here? And just the silhouette of the rocks reminded the discoverers of the contours of the skyscrapers of the Big Apple. A short trail with the same name, the Park Avenue trail, also departs from here, winding between impressive rocks. Sometimes there are huge pieces of debris along the trail; it’s even hard to imagine with what a roar they fell down.
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| Arches National Park |
After driving about a mile, you will find yourself in a picturesque place Courthouse Towers viewpoint. An endless valley with single-standing rocks and framed from the east by Mount La Sal (La Sal Mountains) will stretch before your eyes. The farthest monolith resembles people standing shoulder to shoulder. Probably, as a result of such similarities, he got his name "Three comrades" (Tree gossips).
Salt Mountains (La Sal Mountains), surrounding the valley, are also called "salt" for a reason. They really look like cones sprinkled with snow like salt.
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| Arches National Park |
Further, the road passes by the Great, almost Chinese, wall, at the foot of which there are dunes. Ancient dunes (Petrified dunes) stretch far, far to the east, up to the Colorado river, which goes around the park on the right. At the end, approaching the crossroads marked by a milestone - rock Balancing Rock (Balanced rock), you will see a huge spherical piece of rock weighing 3600 tons, connected by a thin jumper to the pedestal. It seemed that a stronger breeze would blow, and a pebble would roll from its crown place wherever the eyes looked.
After leaving the balancing giant, head to the next highlight of the park - an area called the Window section ("The Window section"). Rounded arches, called windows, look much smaller from a distance than they really are. Take your time - walk to the base of the arches along a short path. Walking is more than comfortable; it’s not even a path, but a gentle staircase made up of wide slabs. What from the parking lot seemed like tiny holes in the rock, in fact turned out to be twin arches - the North and South windows The upper frame is completely out of reach for a person (I think that it is 4-5 meters before it). But you can easily climb through the window to find yourself in a fantastic landscape.
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| Arches National Park |
All attention here is attracted by a stone cone, not very large, but attracting clouds to itself in a magical way. It seems that they revolve in a circle around the top of a fabulous volcano. On the way back from Windows, the road passes through the Garden of the Eden, a group of tall rocks that vaguely resemble trees.
In general, in this park you can find arches for every taste, and the largest to date is the Landscape Arch (Landscape Arch) 93 meters long. It is for today, because tomorrow one of the arches can easily collapse. The symbol of the park is the free-standing Delicate Arch, captured in many photographs around the world. The age of natural formations in the Park is about 150 million years. The prehistoric inhabitants of these places left a memory of themselves in the form of petroglyphs and rock paintings of riders on horseback. The park is considered one of the most convenient for tourists. A well-laid main road goes around the most interesting arches and rocks, frequent observation platforms allow you to admire the beauties without moving far from the car, and relatively short trails(everything is no more than 10 km round trip) they don’t let you get exhausted to the state of “I’m not up to beauty already - I want to go to the hotel!”.