Our next stop was Arches National Park. This National Park has the largest collection of natural arches in the world! We saw only 5.
The first was the Landscape Arch, a thin and long arch.
It looked like it was about to snap in half!
The next arch was Skyline Arch. Through the whole arch you could see the sky, unlike landscape arch, which blends in with the wall of rock behind it.
A common thing a lot of the arches have is that pieces of the arch tend to break off, expanding the sizes of the arches.
The Sand Dunes Arch and the Broken Arch
After seeing those arches we saw the Broken Arch. We had to hike to get there, and I got sand all in my shoes. But the arch and the view around it was so pretty that I didn’t even realize. It wasn’t actually broken, but rather cracked.
One more trail that was right near Broken Arch trail was the Sand Dunes Arch trail.
The trail led us right between two fins. Fins, in this case, have nothing to do with marine life. In the area where there are now arches, fins, and pinnacles there used to be solid layers of sandstone. They cracked because off stresses, and water entered the cracks.
The water eroded the sandstone, and rock formations formed. Fins are narrow, walls of hard sedimentary rock that remain standing after surrounding rock has been eroded away.
The fins created nice shade, so I liked walking there after hiking in the sun. There was an arch on the sand dunes trail also. After that hike we went back to our hotel.
Stargazing
We wanted to relax a little, because we planned on stargazing later on. To do that we went to Double arch. We could see the stars through the arches, which was super cool.
We saw the comet neowise again too. It was the best kind of night, the stars were bright, the arches beautiful, and someone was signing and playing the guitar.
