The Golden Arches--But Not at McDonald's

We decided to go to Arches National Park in the evening before we even checked into the B & B where we were to sleep. We had the makings of a picnic supper, which because the bugs were out, we enjoyed in the car.  We drove all of the paved park roads.

We are flatland, sea-level hikers and it was quite hot and dry and high, and we had just arrived from Florida the previous day. (The park averages less than ten inches of rain a year, which we often get in one month at home.) We also had limited time, so most of what we enjoyed, we saw from the car. The park claims to have over 2,000 natural stone arches, in addition to huge, crazy rock formations like those below. We thought this first one looked like an ogre.

This one seemed straight out of Peter Rabbit stories.

This is a huge boulder that is balanced---for the moment.

This is called a window. Look for the people in the picture.

We  hiked to a viewpoint of Delicate Arch, the one on the Utah license plates. There are people in this picture, too. To hike to the arch itself was considerably longer, so we did not attempt that.

I'm not exactly sure what this beautiful stone is that was on the ground where I took the picture above.

This desert lizard seems to match the stone above.

We took an even shorter hike to see the Ute petroglyphs. These are not ancient, as some are that we have seen. These date to sometime around the arrival of Columbus in the New World. They are attributed to the Ute who passed through here.

Speaking of the Ute: there was a taxi service in Salt Lake City called Ute Taxi. It was interesting to note that the taxis were still driven by Ethiopians.

There was a crude homestead  from the late 1800s that we walked past.