Utah: Arches

Drove from Green River to Arches National Park. For much of the trip there was a hot air balloon visible off to my right--it turns out there's a place offering balloon rides off Rte 191.

Arches Park is immediately east of the Moab Fault; there's a V shapped valley with a high western escarpment and a lower one (but still high) to the east. From the highway, you follow a windy road up the eastern face to the top to get to the arches--or more accurately, the roads which lead to arches. Where the strata have a hard stone cap, that stays in place while the softer stone underneath it erodes. If it's a stone fin, think of it as a square; the middle of the square gets thinner and thinner until it's gone, and what's left is an arch. The opening of the arch gets wider and wider and eventually the center collapses and you're left with two stacks and a lot of rubble between them--that's what formed Sheep Rock (not Shiprock, which is more famous but is also in New Mexico).
There aren't actually all that many arches, or at least not that are visible without some hiking--more like "five" than "lots". There are also balanced rocks, cliffs and so forth, and those are impressive, but if you're expecting a panorama of five hundred arches, you're going to be disappointed. One of the arches is Delicate, and depending on how much hiking you want to do, you can go the long way and stand under it; or a short walk and get a more distant view; or what I did, which is climb to the high overlook. For the amount of effort it took to get there and the view I got, I should have either taken the long hike to the arch itself, or just used my zoom lens from the roadside. The most imposing presence actually was LaSal Mountain, off to the east.