Piotr Angiel Photography: Arches

Ania and Krzyś in the North Window

This was the last stop on our family trip called "The GRAND Trip" in 2012. We travelled in our Toyota Corolla '94 from Ontario to Alberta, then along the Rockies to California and back home to Ontario (15,531 km - 35 days - 12 national parks - 4 provinces - 12 states).

Arches National Park is located near Moab in Utah (USA). We visited the park in the end of June 2012. The main attractions of the park are natural sandstone arches, including the world-famous Delicate Arch (featured on Utah licence plates). Colourful sandstone and erosion created the main attractions in the park. The age of the sandstone on this portion of the Colorado Plateau is between Late Triassic and Early Jurassic. The Navajo Formation was deposited in an arid erg about 210 Ma, and the rocks of the Entrada Formation (~180-140 Ma) were deposited on tidal mudflats, beaches and sand dunes. The arches were formed in quite complicated way. First the rock was jointed due to plastic deformations of salt underlying the sandstone. Joints often form very regular grid of crossing lines, over a large areas. When jointed sandstone becomes exposed, erosion takes over and starts to shape these rocks. Water that entered the joints freezes and thaws, which disjoins cemented sand grains. Loose grains are taken away by wind and the space between joints is getting wider. As the process is the fastest at the ground level, typically it forms a small alcove in the rock, which in favourable circumstances over very long period of time, grain by grain, could expand into a rock window or an arch. For me, the most amazing was the size of the rock wonders in the park. This is something I can not show on my pictures. Therefore, I highly recommend placing the Arches National Park on your USA travel map. Most definitely it was one of my favourite national parks of the United States.