Our Daily Sykes #344 – The North Window

About ten miles north of Moab, Utah is a cluster of arches in the Arches National Park that when listed suggest what defines them – usually an analogous shape.  Totems they are.  For instance there is the Elephant Walk about two/tenths of a mile from the parking lot in the approaching paved highway that makes a loop along these arches like a lion circling an – elephant.   The tops of these arches reach from about 150 to 300 feet above the paths that approach them from the parking lot.  Other names include the Little Duck Arch (easy to see), the Ribbon Arch, Cove Arch, Seagull Arch (hard – for me – to see the bird), the Double Arch (very impressive in its cats cradle) and the Turret Arch, which is very close to the North and South Windows arches, and it is the North Window that is seen here posing like a Timbuktu Palace.  What is also impressive about this group, which we have just sampled, is how they pose like sculpture that is intended to be seen in the round, and of course their aspects change considerably as you move among them.   There are thousands of arches to all sides of Moab.  Some south of the town – beside the Colorado River – are very big, like the Hall Arch.  The Balcony Arch is near the Picture Frame Arch (quite rectangular it is too), the Penny Slot Arch (quite easy to see how it got the name) and Prostitute Butte for which the name is neither obvious nor explained.  By then you are on your way, and only a little ways it is, to the seemingly out-of-place LaSal Mountains.  Dark, somewhat forested and high enough (over 12,000 feet), it gets blanketed with snow for striking contrasts to the red rocks below the peaks of this small range, which is only about 30 miles long – if that.  (Click TWICE to enlarge)

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