Arches National Park

Arches, the closest park to Moab, was designated a National Monument in 1929. We asked ourselves how could this one be much different from other National Parks we’ve seen. The theme is rock formations and arches, hence the name. The scene is set soon after the entrance. The freestanding rock pillar in the center is several hundred feet tall.

Some pillars could have been deliberately carved into recognisible shapes. This one is called The Sheep.

Size is sometimes difficult to appreciate in photos. Balanced Rock, as it is called, is the size of three school buses and weighs an estimated 3,500 tonnes. That’s not cement, by the way, keeping it in place, but  a different strata of rock. There are many other examples of precariously balanced boulders.

So let’s now look at some arches. This is Double Arch with a span of 148 feet. You may pick out tiny figures that are people going to and from the arch.

 North and South Windows resemble a pair of spectacles. Bit heavy on the nose perhaps.

Worth a second glance are the fantastic shapes of the ancient dead juniper trees. Navajo Indians collect and dry juniper berries from living trees to make necklaces.

The arches are all sorts of strange shapes. This is turret arch, with a waving figure in the background to give an idea of scale.

The oddest arch is Delicate Arch. It looks like the bottom half of a body, and is 60 feet tall. Some arches are genuinely precarious: in 2008 one fell.

There are a staggering 2,000 plus arches altogether, The previous photos  show some of the more notable ones, but we didn’t have the time and energy to find the biggest. Landscape Arch is in a more remote part and is the world’s largest at 290 feet span.

No-one lives in the park because no-one is permitted to in any National Park, other than those essential for running the parks. But before 1929 there were a inhabitants were drawn to this wilderness. Here is Jane outside her dream home, the ex residence of a Mr Wolfe.

John Wolfe left his wife and children in Ohio and journeyed west with his eldest son in 1898. They settled in this valley and built a cabin, eking out a living by subsistence farming. A daughter came in 1906 and was appalled by their primitive living conditions. She insisted they build a new cabin with a wooden floor. This is the upgraded cabin- so what must the predecessor have been like! 

Other past dwellers include the Ute Indians who left some animal rock etchings near the Wolfe ranch. The experts say that these were carried out some time between 1650 and 1850.

 At one pull-in we watched the antics of a raven on the back of the truck in front. He dived into the back clearly looking for food. It pays dividends: a chap told us he’d seen a pair of ravens a few days earlier find and devour a packet of crisps, a bag of Gummy Worms (jelly babies) and an apple. Smart birds. 

Finally, the narrowest possible entrance. I’m squeezing between the rocks, if you can recognise the dark figure. Junk foodies beware!

But worth the effort. A golden sandstone arch about 20 feet high awaits on the other side.

Yes, Arches National Park was different and impressive, attracting 1.5 million visitors a year.

Dead Horse Point

Dead Horse Point is a State Park 35 miles from Moab. There’s some interesting scenery on the way. The information board names these two outcrops, properly called buttes, as the Monitor and the Merrimack respectively. These two ironclad battleships fought each other to a standstill in the Civil War. These guys don’t look as if they’ve moved much in the last couple of million years.

A few miles along the route is another stopping point. We pull over. Doesn’t look too interesting, but the board tells us that these flat rock areas are fundamental to supporting life in such dry regions. Rain is captured by the rock hollows, from which animals drink, with some containing life forms like fairy shrimps. Algae grows in patches on the rocks. This is all part of the fragile ecosystem.

At mile 35 we pay our $10 park entry and carry on to the first overlook. It’s something like the Grand Canyon but not so deep.

In the top right hand corner is a river or lake. Closer inspection reveals several large ponds that the ever-present info board tells us are potash beds. Water is pumped down to dissolve underground mineral salts and brought to the surface as a solution, then piped into shallow evaporation beds. Once fully dried out, the potash is harvested by laser-guided 20 tonne scrapers. 

We have a mini Grand Canyon here because it’s the same Colorado river that has created big brother a few hundred miles downstream.

Outside the visitor centre is a dinosaur footprint captured in rock. It’s about 6 inches square and looks like a giant chicken footprint. How many soldiers would you need for that boiled egg?

Dead Horse Point itself is the end of the road. There’s a sheer drop on all sides apart from the narrow access strip. Notices warn to keep away from the edges.There are too many viewpoints to be fenced and, anyway, it really is up to visitors to take responsibility for following the safety code and using common sense. The couple sat by the wall overlooking the 2000 foot drop are just about safe enough, but we saw people stood on the wall and even jumping up for photos and selfies. “Smile…back a bit…!”

Finally, the sad tale of how Dead Horse Point got its name. Wild mustangs roamed this area in the 19^th century and cowboys would round them up to select the most marketable ones first and come back for the others later. Dead Horse point was the ideal place for such a round-up. The mustangs could be herded onto the neck of land and then the narrow access barricaded. They were thus firmy corralled. One time, they contained a herd, taking the prime horses and leaving the others. But they didn’t return, and the remaining horses died of thirst and starvation, in sight of, but unable to reach, the Colorado River.

Looking in the direction of the flow of the river from this high vantage point, the vastness of the canyon system created over the millennia becomes apparent.

I’m sure we all take too many digital photos, but showing you any more of the park would be like, um,….flogging a dead horse. Boom boom.

Cedar City to Moab

We took a leisurely two days to travel to Moab, stopping overnight at Walmart. Walmart is the Tesco of the USA but, unlike Tesco, is happy for motorhomers to park up overnight. It works both ways, the campers get a free night, with Walmart 24 hour security in attendance, and Walmart get in return the extra pairs of eye and ears from the campers should any thieves or vandals think of dodging around security. Also, the campers shop in the store, as we do.

There aren’t many purpose-built motorway services compared to the UK; there may be pulloff fast food places that are signposted, or you can use the rest areas and make your own food. The rest areas are spasmodic, but this road is well supplied, and for lunch we stop atanyway one with information boards. It looks down over a vast and desolate plain.

The panels tell of early Mormon settlers who saw the area as a potential cattle prairie, but were warned off by the Indians because of the dryness and lack of good water. But the Mormons went ahead anyway and eked out a living. They obviously didn’t do that well as there is no sign of cultivation, livestock or dwellings today. The mountain behind is most eye-catching, but that doesn’t put food on the table.

Shortly after leaving the rest area the road runs through a steep gorge. So much rock has been blasted away, it begs the question whether a tunnel wouldn’t have been cheaper.

 We noticed black skies in the distance over an hour go. Now it’s catching up with us. The photo is not so much for the heavy rain clouds as for the unusual flying saucer shaped cloud. Quite disappointed that we weren’t of sufficient interest to be abducted.

We pull in to another rest area to change drivers just as the storm breaks and the wind whips up. It takes everyone by surprise, including the rest area rubbish collector who is caught, literally, with his trousers down.

I’m now driving and can honestly say these are the worst conditions I’ve ever experienced: rain in buckets and fierce gusting wind. We pulled in to a layby when it got too bad. Not far to the site, fortunately, and luckily some respite in the deluge as we set up in our pitch. But not for long, the downpour and lashing wind is back again. Little rivers are running down the road and through the pitch.

 By the end of the evening the tempest has run its course, and next day dawns bright and warm. We discover we have a really pleasant pitch at the edge of the site with a fine view of the cliffs. Happy holidays again.

Bryce Canyon, the Jewel in the Crown

Bryce is 75 miles from the campsite and in the mountains, so we expected a difficult drive. However the roads were first class, as you can see, even cutting through a rock as we neared our destination.

There was unusual rock scenery from here on to the park, like this column with what looks like a giant Budda on top.

The guide books, and everyone who had visited Bryce, said how fantastic it was, so you arrive expecting to be bowled over immediately. Here’s the first viewpoint, very nice, spectacular even, but nothing different to other parks we’ve visited.

But moving on round to the next overlook, some of the rock formations are now quite different. The colours especially are almost glowing. The scale is vast, particularly viewed in the second photo below.

At another point there are different shapes, stood like petrified figures, Where these have weathered into individual columns, as in the second photo, they are known as hoodoos. Particularly note the different colours. The white isn’t snow, although we are at 8,000 feet: it was actually a really warm day.

An information board quotes the wisdom of an elderly Paiute called Indian Dick who explains that before the Indians, the Legend People occupied the land and they did bad things, and so were turned to stone by the Spirits. More effective punishment than fines or probation, certainly. It needs little imagination to see theses columns as weathered stone statues, as in an ancient cathedral. This is a good example.

Continuing with the cathedral comparison, this cliff could easily be part of a medieval façade with alcoves, carvings and statues.

The rim of the canyon is eroding a few centimetres every decade and this is apparent from the exposed tree roots in places. These roots were level with the soil when the tree was established.

The trees are all firs of several different types, generally growing where you would expect, but occasionally one defies the odds- how does it manage to survive?

The canyon complex is crisscrossed by hiking and riding trails at all levels. This is a horse trek heading down to the canyon floor. We stayed firmly on the top and flattest level.

The canyon was named after one Ebeneezer Bryce, a mormon settler originally from Scotland. His famous quote sums up the fragmented, chaotic nature of the place: “a hellava place to lose a cow”. This next photo is a what we meant. The front ranks could even be the Chinese terracotta army.

From time to time we need to prove that we’ve visited places together, so here we are on one of the overlooks, kind permission of a passing tourist.

What a place! Never seen anything like it.

Cedar City, Utah

Utah’s earliest white settlers were a group of Mormons who travelled into the uncharted West to avoid persecution. Led by Brigham Young, they settled in what is now Salt Lake City in 1847.

Young sought self sufficiency, which needed iron. Ore was discovered 250 miles south, and volunteers were enlisted to develop the area for an iron works. In 1851 the new settlers arrived where Cedar City now stands. But they needed an expert, and fortunately had one in Richard Harrison who was previously been superintendent of the world’s largest iron foundry in Liverpool. He came with the initial wave of settlers, and designed and built the first iron works. It produced its first iron from local ore on Sept 30^th 1852. Some achievement, from a standing start!

The local Frontier Homestead Museum celebrates those early days with interesting memorabilia, if presented somewhat haphazardly.

Out the front is an 1920’s excavator used for scooping iron ore. I guess it could scoop almost anything. The machines were never used in the locality as the iron works unfortunately didn’t thrive, and closed in 1858.

Here’s a rickety wild west stagecoach demonstrating, if nothing else, how uncomfortable the ride must have been. Dangerous, too, as the stage has a bullet hole in the side.

And now a reconstructed settlers cabin from the late 19^th Century. Jane thinks she could live in this just fine as it’s about the same size as our caravan back home. Also it’s more arrow-proof than our caravan, but no cassette loo. You don’t ask.

Because of the elevation here, over 5,000 feet, winters can be cold and snowy. A local inventor came up with a snowmobile in the 1940’s. Although it looks more like a midget submarine, apparently it did work and was a great success leading to the much more sophisticated machines of today.

Probably the most interesting exhibits were the dwellings of the Southern Native Americans. These are called wickiups, made from woven rushes, or bark, or branches in a variety of designs and sizes. These were used until  about a century ago. The museum examples don’t look as if they would offer much shelter in bad weather- or even good weather, come to that.

The pit houses of the Fremont peoples who lived in the area until the 13^th century seem much more substantial. They were farmers and possessed sophisticated artifacts like pots and ornaments that have been found, but little is known about their culture, and we don’t know why they suddenly disappeared.

Cedar City is now pleasant smalltown America, complete with national fast food chains, shops and garages. However, the “Historic Center” has been preserved which contains its core of individuality.

Nearby is Kolob canyon. It’s rather overshadowed by its near neighbour Zion that we visited a few days ago,but it’s quite spectacular in its own right. There are some excellent walks within, as can be seen from this trailhead.

Moving up into the canyon itself, the 1000 foot red rock walls are very impressive.

Driving and climbing all the way to the end of the scenic 6 mile paved road is an overlook that puts you nearly level with the top of the walls. Description boards point out hidden valleys where streams feed dense stands of firs. Cougars have been spotted but no chance for casual visitors. It fact there wasn’t much wildlife beyond the occasional bird, rabbit, lizard and squirrel.

Unlike Zion, there were only a handful of cars, so we had a leisurely morning in yet another magnificent American scenic park.