Willow Springs Road and Arches National Park

 

 Willow Springs Road and Arches National Park

On our second day at Moab, we decided to explore a road that we’d done before.  I especially like this because we get to walk right up to a piece of earth’s history!!

As we began our drive down Willow Springs Road, spring was certainly showing off once again – green throughout the flat plains type area, dotted with the wildflowers blooming!  Seeing this was such an unexpected gift!

Before too long, we came across some dinosaur tracks – just out in the wild for all to see.  These tracks were made by a species of dinosaur that roamed this area about 165 million years ago.  The human size predators that were in this area walked a shallow sea area that inundated the area around Moab.  When the sea retreated, these tracks were buried and preserved as the sands and muds turned to stone over time.

This is a close-up view of the tract of the dinosaur and an artist’s rendering of what it was thought to look like.  The name of this dinosaur is a sauropod, and although they were thought to be our size, I still wouldn’t have wanted to meet up with one!  To date, more than 2500 tracks have been found both on public land, as these tracks are, and also in Arches National Park.  We’ve not ever seen any that are in Arches.  What we found rather sad was that these tracks seem to be fading, compared to the last time we saw them.  Eventually, they will, most likely, disappear into history.

When I turned my back on the tracks, this was the view of the area where the sauropods once roamed.  Of course, it looked very different at that time, because at least some of this land would have been under water.  As a piece of information, the strip of turquoise colored rock running through one of the bluffs is either copper or uranium.

As we moved on, we began to see the familiar rock formations of Arches National Park in the distance, with the La-Sal Mountains behind them in one of these images.  We are still on what is very much a primitive dirt road at this time, especially when I took the upper photo, but right about now is when we entered Arches National Park formally.  We were fine to enter the park, since we were in a Jeep, but from the point when the road enters the Park, all other vehicles, such as ATV’s, UTV’s and OHV’s, even if they are considered street legal, are not allowed in the Park.  So, to enter the Park via this “back door”, you must be driving a more traditional vehicle.

As we drew closer to the main road running through Arches, more things became visible to us.  The upper photo is of a formation called Balanced Rock, I believe, and if you look closely at the bottom photo, you can see an arch in among the other rock formations.

Once inside the Park, there were several sights to see.  The image on the left is the entrance to what’s called Devils Garden Trail.  We didn’t walk it this time, as we had Max in the Jeep with us, and dogs are not allowed outside vehicles in the National Park.  This path, leads to Landscape Arch, which is a very long, narrow arch.  The trail, which used to run right under that arch, is no longer open to the public, because pieces of Landscape Arch have broken off and crashed to the ground over the years.  Also along this trail is the place where another arch, Wall Arch, once stood.  That arch collapsed in 2008.  The middle image is of what I think of as Twin Arches.  From the angle of this image, if you look closely, you can see that you are actually looking through two arches right next to one another to see the sky beyond them.  The third image, on the right, is of an interesting rock formation.  Sometimes separate rocks seem to have formed butting right up to each other.  There were many rocks like that in this area, but there was an opening where we could see a smaller version of the famous Balanced Rock.

Another arch close to the road and easy to access is one called Skyline Arch.  The upper image is of the view from the parking area near the arch.  The lower image, though, is from the side.  In this image, if you look closely, you can see a smaller arch close to Skyline Arch.  It’s a bit more difficult to see because you are only looking at more rock formations when you look through it, and not the sky.

As we were driving out of Arches, we passed a rock formation that I like – Three Sisters – it always reminds me of my three nieces, all sisters.  Although we’ve visited Arches National Park several times over the years, I generally welcome the opportunity to visit it again, simply because of its relatively temporary nature.  Since all the formations and arches are made of sandstone, over time, they will all collapse, just like Wall Arch that I mentioned above, and how Landscape Arch is slowly breaking apart.  So, let’s enjoy this National Park while we can!!

Enjoy!!