Ken's Travel Journal - Summer 2004

	Ken's Journal No. 4 - Summer 2004 Canyonlands and Arches National Parks, Moab UT - 07/21 - 07/25/2004 Days 25-29 on the road. Part II.

	Arches lies atop a vast underground salt bed that was deposited across the Colorado Plateau some 300 million years ago. Over millions of years, the salt bed was covered with sediment from floods, winds and oceans that came and went. In places, this layer of sediment, now compressed into rock, may have been more than a mile thick. Under the weight of this rock, the salt layer liquefied, shifted and buckled. In places, the rock rose and domes were formed. In other places rock fell and displaced the salt. Arches sits on top of one of those domes. As the dome rose, the surface rock cracked along organized fault lines - Picture turning a section of an orange inside out. These cracks filled with water and alternate freezing and thawing widened the cracks and winds carried the debris away. What's left now are formations called "fins."
		These are the "fins" from which the arches are created. Picture if you will, a small hole developing in the side of a fin from the effects of wind and rain erosion. As the erosion increases, it eventually perforates the fin. Depending on the degree of hardness, the fin stands and an arch is born, or the fin collapses from the weakness.

Wall Arch. The Devil's Garden trail goes right by the base of this one. This was taken at mid-morning with the sun reflecting on the arch from the wall on the left. The trail runs between two fins.

Double-O Arch from the "inside" of the arch. The trail approaches from the far side and to get this picture, you have to climb through the bottom arch, negotiate a ledge to the right and climb a steep bench to where I'm standing.

	Double-O Arch as you approach it from the trail.	The wall approaching Partition Arch. The strange eroded patterns almost look like they were carved by prehistoric man. Note that some of the small holes have little stones piled in them. See the note below.
	The Devil's Garden trail is marked with cairns - piles of stones. I've found that visitors to trails sometimes build cairns of their own and you have to be careful you're not thrown off the real trail by them. While hiking the Devil's Garden, I ran across a Ranger hiking the trail and knocking down all the "false" cairns. He said that during the summer season this "trail maintenance" is necessary twice week and sometimes takes a whole day for the several miles of trails in the garden. Now look at the wall above - although you can't really make it out, those piles of stones in the holes in the wall are miniature cairns. I'm not sure why people do this, but perhaps some people have a sort of spiritual compulsion to do this. I've seen false cairns in some pretty unlikely places - like on the beach, on trails that are not marked with cairns, along roads, etc. Anyone have any suggestions?

Partition Arch. The inside of this arch is a closed "room" with no ceiling. As this picture was taken, morning sunlight was shining directly on the back of the wall we're looking at. The strong reflections lit the rest of the room with a warm red glow.

I'm sure I saw this scene in a Star Trek episode with Kirk and Spock standing just outside the opening with phasers draw!

The scene inside the room - lit perfectly by the warm reflections of the sun from the walls.

	Another dead tree.	Christmas Tree Arch. I've no clue where it got it's name.
	Next, more around Moab - Part III.

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