Bairnhess RV Adventures: Arches... I'm Loving It!

Moab, UT September 29 - October 4, 2013

We prepared for our travel day in the mid 30's drove for four hours to arrive in Moab in the high 70's. The drive was a fascinating change in landscape from the pine forests back to the red sandstone cliffs surrounding the Colorado River. Moab is a fun and funky little town that has had a huge growth spurt with their main focus on outdoor adventure and brewery's. We arrived at the OK RV Park, a little off the beaten path and a relatively small park to find our site right next to a single wide mobile home with no grass in sight anywhere! Not the best park, but sadly not the worst either. Zoe managed to stick her paws into every sticker-burr in the place and they were everywhere.

There is snow on the adjacent mountains - oh no! It's coming!

We were thankful that we had planned five nights here because we had a lot of chores to take care of.... truck service, bike repair, banking, bill paying, cleaning and shopping. We quickly decided (thanks to Peg's mom) we better use our first day to visit Arches NP since the government has their head up their !*&@ and it might be our last chance. We made our first stop the visitor center to get the lay of the land and then set off on the 18 mile scenic drive through the park. The park has all of the sandstone "attractions" marked and explained; kind of like seeing images in the clouds or finding that zodiac constellation. We had our hike already picked out since it is one of the "High Five" on our Extreme Hikes shirts -this one called the "Delicate Arch". It is a three mile hike up to the site of the famous arch, the one on the Utah license plate and includes a short walk on a rock ledge. It was a very popular hike and very fun. At one point we thought we were on Enchanted Rock.

Geologic History of Arches:

What makes it different from Utah's other NP's is two-fold. One, it is still about sandstone but the environment in which it was deposited gives each layer a different texture, and therefore, erosional rate. Two, in a word, SALT. The formation of arches began 300 million years ago in the Pennsylvanian Period, when saltwater from a nearby ocean flooded the area. The water then evaporated, leaving behind a deposit of salt. Repeated flooding and evaporation left deposits that, over many millions of years, became thousands of feet thick. Costal sand dunes and desert sediments then buried the salt. The sediments eventually became rock again due to compaction from the weight of overlying sediment and cementation due to the presence of calcium carbonate (calcite) in surface water percolating down through the sediment. The salt is now lying under the enormous weight of this rock, salt is unstable under pressure, somewhat elastic and it began to flow deep underground. In the process, domes, faults and anticlines (up-folds of the earth with cores of salt) were created. Between 60-10 million years ago, significant erosion began. In the last 10 million years erosion has stripped away 5,000 vertical feet of rock. This exposed cracks in the rock that allowed water to infiltrate and dissolve the salt, and the salt valleys began to collapse, now the stage is set for arch formation.

Arches are created from the same "fins" that gave birth to the hoodoos. Here the fins are larger and thicker. Because of the different depositional environments of the sandstone there is varying amounts of calcium carbonate (calcite, the glue) in the sandstone. The more calcium carbonate the more resistant it is to erosion. Rainwater dissolves the calcium carbonate in these weaker areas and creates holes, gravity and erosion expand the holes to help complete the formation of an arch.

Park Avenue. This shows the early stage of arch development. The rock fins have formed from deep erosion of fracture sets which resulted from early faulting, but windows which later lead to arches are absent.

Here are the 3 major sandstone layers. Moab on top, Slick Rock in the middle and Dewey Bridge on the bottom.

Three Gossips and Sheep Rock to the immediate right. Look for the head of the sheep, once you find it's nose you can see the rest. Go have another cocktail, come back and look again!

Tower of Babel and The Organ. Yeah, I don't see it either!

Petrified sand dunes

The balanced rock is the Slick Rock member of sandstone, "Balanced Rock" sits on the contact of the Dewey Bridge Member. It shows the differential erosion of the two members. The entire structure is 128 feet tall, the boulder is 55 feet and weighs 3,500 tons. The Dewey Bridge sandstone is very susceptible to erosion because it has a high concentration of mud and silt, so that rock is going down probably sooner rather than later, geologically speaking!

Cove Arch. That window will get bigger and bigger and so therefore will the arch.

This will eventually become a double arch system. One arch already present with a window in the fin behind the arch.

Hike to Delicate Arch - Enchanted Rock anyone?

Delicate Arch with the La Sal Mtns in the background. The opening is 46 feet high and 32 feet wide. It is called "delicate" because it sits at the edge of a huge sandstone bowl which is not seen in this pic.

Devil's Garden

Fiery Furnace. Known for its twisting maze of fin formations and canyons, it is so deceptive that you can't hike in there without a guide. Everything looks the same and without points of reference you get lost! Here much of the Moab layer (light tan sandstone) is still on top of the Slick Rock sandstone. The white layer is where water has removed the iron from the sediment and "bleached" the sandstone.

We had hoped to also visit Canyonlands NP while in Moab, but alas it closed. We replaced the day with a drive on La Sal Mountain Loop Road and a visit to Dead Horse Point State Park. The drive is a 60 mile loop through the Manti-La Sal National Forest and it was breathtaking! The fall colors are in full bloom through the mountains and there were spectacular views of the valley. It finishes along the Colorado River. So glad we did it.

The colors were very vibrant

View down into the valley. Nice shot of the top of the Colorado Plateau.

Colorful regrowth after a fire - breathtaking.

The black covering on the sandstone is called "Desert Varnish". It is a stained area and or streaks of black on canyon walls and cliff faces. You can see it to the left side of the pic in contrast to the right side of the pic which is still red. It is caused by precipitation of iron and manganese as groundwater and rain evaporate from the rock face.

Dead Horse Point State Park is hopping since it is the only game in town. It is a fairly little park surrounding a canyon that rivals the Grand Canyon for views. We hiked the East Rim trail with the dogs, a nice treat since they had been left home a lot lately. As we hiked the 3.5 mile trail we watched as some weather was slowly blowing in.... we made it back to the truck just in the nick of time. We started the hike at a sunny 77 degrees and ended it at 52 degrees and rain! Yes, a 25 degree drop in an hour and a half. WHAT?

The grand canyon has nothing on this! In the distance you can see the mighty Colorado River responsible for carving this canyon as well as its better known big brother.

OK, Grand Canyon is a little bigger....This is only 4,000 feet deep and has 300 million years of exposed geologic history. The GC is 6,000 feet deep and has 2 billion years of exposed geologic history

Fabulous views in every direction

There is a storm a comin', run Forrest run!

After raining most of the night we awoke to a beautiful day for our trek to Colorado. I checked weather in Moab, UT and Mancos, CO our destination and they were both forecasting sunny, clear days in the 50's so no worries. We packed up and headed out on our 120 mile drive across the border. We drove through rain, sleet, snow and finally sunshine all in the two hour drive.