Rhonda Bracey: At Random

I’ve been to Arches once before, quite some time ago. I’d forgotten how awesome it was.

But before we got to Arches, we had to drive from Cortez, CO to Moab, UT.

We stopped at the Hole in the Rock  on the way there. It was an aptly named place (‘hole’), in my opinion. Cheap,  tacky,  tourist crap and a ‘zoo’ they should be ashamed of. I wish I hadn’t spent any money supporting that hell-hole for animals. The only vaguely interesting thing for me was some of the ‘found object’ metal art sculptures. This is the sort of place that might have held interest to travellers in the 1950s or so,  but not now. Some in our group must have found something of interest as several bought stuff there.

Next stop was Subway in Moab where we picked up sandwiches etc for our picnic lunch in the park, and my friend Kris who has retired to Moab. Kris was able to tell us a lot about Arches and how it was formed, gave us info about the flora and fauna of the park, etc. We had our picnic lunch on the rocks below Balanced Rock, then visited Windows, then the lower viewing area below Delicate Arch, and finally the magnificent jaw dropping Park Avenue.

This is such an awesome place where you are dwarfed not only by these magnificent structures, but by the magnitude of forces that were – and are – at play to create them. And the time-scale of these changes. Visiting Arches makes you realise how insignificant your place is in this world.

I took close to 100 photos in Arches today. Here are just a few.

Contrails on the way to Moab.