These parks are only 30 miles apart but extremely different. Well…maybe not extremely but very. Both spring out of the southern Utah desert after miles of sagebrush, boring high desert grassy environment. There aren’t many cacti in the high desert here so it is a flat, going on forever sort of desert. There are some grasses so generally you see sparse herds of cattle also. And pronghorn! Then you hit the Ute mountains which are very pretty and were covered with snow this time of year.
Arches NP is made of mountains of striations of red, pink and orange rocks with desert areas in between. Occasionally you see white rock areas. Because this was a tremendous salt plain at the end of the Permian, areas collapsed as the salt dissolved (from years of rainwater seeping through the cracks) and upheaval threw the mountains up. Then erosion wore out parts of the rock and left windows and then arches as large sections of rock fell. Arches has over 2000 identified arches but you can only easily get to about 20. If you have a high clearance vehicle, there were backroads to see many more arches. Apparently there has been a lot of vandalism on the arches in the last 10 years, things like tik tok call names and snap chat handles, so several trails to arches have been closed down. 🤨
We were able to hike most of the trails because there were not as many large rocky areas. Lots of sand pits and occasionally steeper areas but nothing I couldn’t traverse with my hiking sticks. There were some strenuous trails but we had plenty of easy and moderate trails to choose from. Again, it was spring break in Utah so things got crowded as the day wore on. In fact, when we left Arches about 2 pm, the entrance to the park had been closed! The park was actually full!! They are starting a ticket system next week with limited entrance each hour to the park. I can see why.
The next day we went to Canyonlands NP. Wow! It is miles upon miles of dark red, light red, pink, orange and white stratified rock canyons. As far as you can see. Big deep canyons. It started to make the Grand Canyon seem little. But as Dave observed, you can’t really see many of the canyons because you are above them looking down. You can take a high clearance 4 wheel drive vehicle down to the tops of the canyons for a 100 mile trail (also you can bike it), or there is one crazy sounding hike through a maze of slot canyons. Neither of which we were going to do. It is also at high altitude so when we went on a 1.3 mile rim walk, which btw included some gentle bouldering 🙁, it was tough because there is no oxygen again. I just find it sad that even after 5 weeks of being above 4000 feet to almost 9000 feet, I didn’t really adjust much. Boo.
It is hard to believe that this is our last National Park on this road trip. We are heading to Stansbury Park to visit the Bolsers and Sheppards for 3 days. It is their spring break (image that😅!) so no softball games or soccer to watch. But we are meeting Jordan’s Laura’s parents so that should be interesting. Bye until our next travels!