Lemme tellya. This blogging takes up much more time than one might think. This is my first blog, but not my first website. The process of determining what to share and how to share it is time-consuming. I watch and evaluate everything before it is uploaded. Why am I telling you this? To explain why I am (again) tired. I was up until 4:30 am waiting on a very slow Youtube upload. And for naught—that particular upload was slow because it was problematic.
I got up in time to visit Arches National Park. Yesterday, I still wondered why—if Arches is so close to Canyonlands—is Arches a separate park. Today’s visit answers the question. The character of Arches is vastly different to that of Canyonlands. At Arches, you queue up and proceed to view a very dense, profoundly interesting, and seemingly unending display of beautiful formations. You can pull over and view from the side of the road, and you can hike a couple of trails. But the feeling is that you are looking through a vitrine.
There is good reason for refraining from climbing on or touching the arches: They may be unstable and/or fragile. They can come crumbling down with little warning. We need to respect this fact and keep our distance.
Many of the photos that inspired me to take this trip were taken at arches. I thought the name of the park is just that—a name. It is a descriptor of the types of rocks it is famous for. There’s a series of geological events that can cause solid rock to reform into an arch. Now that I read that, it seems obvious. It was not obvious yesterday.
I saw much more than arches today, beautiful shapes and color combinations that you just don’t expect to see—to say nothing of their immense sizes! And then I got tired very fast and returned to the home base in the middle of the afternoon.
