Arches

Arches National Park is famous for its arches, obviously. A bit of a drive from our base at Moab, but offered plenty of short hikes amongst the sandstone.

Here is a little arch just starting to form

 
This, aptly, is called Balancing Rock. Balancing so far - it will of course fall at some point. Probably not when anyone is about - presumably it will come down at a point of bad weather.

 Our first proper arch - in fact called a window. You can see why.

Looking up - a worrying crack down the middle

No idea what this little bird is, sat in its nest in a shrub just in front of the arch

As you can see these form a pair of windows  - known as the North and South Windows - when viewed from the right angle.

Some extremely intrepid kids even climbed into these hollows.

This is one of the most precarious of arches - the arch being very wide and thin, but an almost elegant design.

One has to resist making schoolboy jokes about giant penises...

This is one of the most famous of the arches, but we didn't make it. Just felt like too much effort. Trouble is, you can only take in so many arches before you stop being awestruck and start shrugging your shoulders thinking, yup, another arch. Zoom lens does the job of a lot of climbing

So we made our way back to Moab, somewhat overrated as a town. Essentially it is just ribbon development along a highway. And it turned out that despite reviews, we had sampled ts only good restaurant the night before. This Italian one was really not very nice, despite the large portions.

But hard to fault the sunsets.