Our destination today was Arches National Park. Did the regular routine: visitors bureau for passport stamp, pin for Linda's purple jacket, watch the film about the park, get a map/info and take off for all the scenic ports o' call.
Arches National Park is a vibrant, living museum where works of art are displayed, preserved and protected. Ideally only nature will continue its work on the park features through water and erosion. When you look closely at the towers of rock in the park you can see beautiful tapestries that adorn these walls. The thread that holds much of the park's tapestry together is iron. The red thread visible in the rock layers is due to rusting or oxidizing of iron. Whitish to yellowish-tan threads are the result of an accumulation of organic acids dissolving the iron and bleaching the rock. There are also ribbons of turquoise-colored threads running through many parts of the park. This unique blue-green layer was created when volcanic ash settled into a large alkaline lake - an environment with little oxygen. Linda tried to take some photos that would show this beautiful teal color.
We took lots of photos, mostly from close to the road. So, since we didn't go on the hiking trails, we didn't see all of the arches. But we saw some and saw lots of interesting configurations of rock. And they were different than in any of the other 3 National Parks in Utah that we have been to on this Road Trip.
We spent the morning at Arches then came back to our lodging for lunch. Next it was time for some housekeeping duties. Linda went to a laundromat and John worked on processing some photos.
In the late afternoon we went back to Arches Park to get some photos at the golden hour, just before sunset.
Then it was pizza time. John fetched pizza from Paradox Pizza and we had a relaxing dinner in our room.
So, it is off to bed for the two old buzzards and Fannie Mae. Tomorrow we explore yet another national park, the Island in the Sky District of Canyonlands National Park.
Loads of HDR photos in today's gallery. In fact, 46 of the 53 photos are HDR. It takes a lot long to process these, but the results are really worth it. Click here to view them.
Today's tea bag philosophy is from a Yogi tea bag" "Mental happiness is total relaxation."
John's Pot-Shot, while randomly selected, was quite fitting to our receent views of the splendor of nature.
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