Abstract Musings

Day 6 — Arches National Park, May 2005

In May 2005, Rachelle and I took a vacation to Colorado. After riding on the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, we made a detour in our travel plans and drove through eastern Utah to visit Arches National Park. This was our second trip to Arches National Park; our first visit was in September 2001.

Arches National Park

Arches Sign
The park sign greeted us as we entered the park.

The highlight of our previous visit to Arches was hiking out to Delicate Arch. On this trip, we had planned to hike out to Delicate Arch first thing in the morning. But the overcast skies threatened rain, so we decided to spend our time visiting areas of the park we had not explored on our prior visit.

Petrified Dunes
Here’s a view of the cloudy skies with the La Sal Mountains in the background. In the foreground are the Petrified Dunes. This is an inaccurate description since only organic material can be petrified. These rocks were at one time sand dunes which were compressed into these sandstone formations.

Against the Sky
This mammoth formation is aptly named Balanced Rock.

Balanced Rock
We hiked a short trail around this rock formation.

Balanced Rock
One last view of Balanced Rock. It would be the first of two formations we would see that day known by that name.

One Comment

  1. Andrew
    Posted January 15, 2006 at 9:47 am | Permalink

    I loved going to Arches National Park when I went there. And these pictures are great.