Arches National Park

Arches National Park, Utah

Once I left Portland, I made my way south to Arches National Park near Moab, Utah.

It's a place of wondrous beauty - people come to see it from all over the world.  I heard some Asian languages (I don't know enough about them to tell which is which), French, German, Spanish.  And it's not like this is an easy place to get to.  It's several hours from anywhere; I'm sure for many of those I saw, it was the trip of a lifetime.

There's a single road winding through the park - I must admit I'm glad I wasn't there during peak tourist season.  As it was, many of the parking areas were close to full, and they don't allow you to park outside those lots.  (for good reason; the desert environment is fragile.  Several million feet going everywhere would quickly destroy the beauty.)  Which means, as the road turns into a twenty mile long parking lot during the busy times, you can't stop and admire and take pictures at every pullout.  I'm not much into crowds in remote places.  It's probably a good thing I went as late in the fall as I did.

I read all the literature about how science tells us the arches came to be.  They said the sandstone washed down as gravel over an ancient sea bed and compressed into rock over millenia.  The wind and rains came, the salt eroded away and left the sandstone behind in the form of arches.

I have an explanation I like better.  I think God is into beauty (sure made a lot of it in this world), was experimenting one day, and things worked together just right.