Visiting Arches National Park In Moab, Utah - Part 1

Visiting Arches National Park In Moab, Utah - Part 1

It is already very cold and snowy in the high mountains of Colorado.
We have been here for over a month, and our gypsy hearts were yearning for an adventure.

Since one of the advantages of living in the West is close proximity to some major national parks and amazing landscapes, we decided to do a short road trip to Utah and Arizona.

Our destinations were modest, since the area is very vast and it takes a very long time to cover it by car.

We chose to visit Arches National Park - just north of Moab, Utah, Canyonlands National Park, south of Moab, Monument Valley in Arizona, and the stunning Antelope Canyon, near the small town of Page, Arizona.

We left home on a cold and snowy day and drove west.
By the time we left Colorado, the snow storm had stopped, and we enjoyed a quiet drive to Moab.

Moab nowadays is a very cool little town.
It has lots of comfortable hotels, arts and craft shops and tasty eateries.

It was very cold in Moab, and some businesses were closed until springtime, but we had no problem finding good places for breakfast and two Thai restaurants serving fabulous Thai food.

Visiting Arches National Park was very simple, and because the winter is the low season, there were very few cars inside the park.

The park area is very vast, so you basically drive your car until you reach a special rock formation, and there you can park and hike.
All the monuments and trails are well marked.

We downloaded a Smartphone App called GyPSy Tour to Arches and Canyonlands.
It does not require cell reception, which is very patchy anyway inside the park, and the narration starts automatically as you drive by the formations.

We started early in the morning and stayed until sunset, but we did not have time to hike throughout the vast park.
We plan to visit again to hike the very northernmost part of the park to “Landscape Arch” in the future.

The name “Arches National Park” was chosen because the park is full of the most amazing formations of natural rock arches.

Most of these rock arches were formed by water and wind over a very long period of time, but some were created overnight, when the middle section of the rock simply broke off.

The feeling of being in the place and seeing these amazing colorful formations situated in the vast landscape, was purely magical.

I felt a deep sense of reverence for the beauty of the earth.
The American Indians, who lived here for over 12,000 years, left their paintings, called petroglyphs, on the rocks.

The maintenance man in our hotel gave us a tip that is mostly known to the locals, about a hidden valley south of Moab, that is full of petroglyphs.

Since we took so many photos, I divided the post to two parts, and will be posting the second part tomorrow.

With love and light to you from the stunning Arches National Park,
Tali