2000 Arches but we only saw 7 during an early morning to
mid-morning hike. It gets in the 90s outside
in the afternoon and cools off to 60s at night.
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| My Mountain Man |
The Arches have fanciful names like Skyline, Tapestry,
Tunnel and they are all in the process of dieing (crumbling),they are born of uplifting and erosion (Moab fault) and they die from the same processes; aging takes its toll.
We are camping in Devil’s Garden. Colossal sandstone fins and pinnacles and
other geological formations dwarf people.
Pat calls the area Garden of Fertility because so many of the pinnacles
remind him of..yes, you can guess.
You can imagine spirits in these places, too. If you listen closely, you can hear whispering from the canyon ghosts or is it
just the wind?
Its Alive as much as the jackrabbit. The clump
is not a dirt clod but cryptobiotic clump of organisms which help keep the soil
in the desert fertile and moist enough for other life to take hold. Organisms
like cyanobacteria, algae, moss, lichens and fungi interdependent on each other
make up the clumps. If you step on one
it takes up to 50 years to recover so the desert is a fragile beauty as well as
stark. I will have to write about the beauty of the desert flowers later.
The Lions Club of Moab has constructed a nice picnic area
and super bike path the Moab City Limits to the beginning of Arches (5 miles
away) and Canyonlands. We see a lot of
people biking. But only the Canyonlands
has enough shoulder to really accommodate bikers. They could make changes easily in Arches and
add a bike lane. I guess it always comes
down to $$$.
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