Arched Utah

We've seen the Arch image on every car registration that has gone past us in the last few days whilst in Utah. It's one of many red rock arches within the unbelievable Arches National Park. Just off the highway is the entrance to this stunning park. You instantly begin climbing the u-turned road into another strange Utah world.

We're soon presented with tall and narrow slabs of red rock rising high above our heads. Rounding another corner shows us the distant mountain peaks and the foremost towering red monoliths of the park. Five minutes in and this place is cracking already.

Okay, so it is busier than the parks we've visited in the last few days but that just doesn't matter once you start seeing the crazy natural arches around the place.

Every rock and shape in said rock has been named, some with better names than others. So we have Park Avenue because the rocks look like a City Skyline. Then there's Courthouse Rock, which looks like a courthouse.

Double Arch, which is two arches close together and of course Balanced Rock, which is well you guessed it. But then there's Broken Arch, which is an unbroken arch. Odd. One thing they all have in common, apart from being arches, is that they're all superb looking. Just seeing all these naturally formed red arches below the deep blue sky in the sun of the day is a great way to spend a day, or two as it turned out.

There are over 2000 natural arches within the park in what is another humongous expanse of land.

We walk a few trails, one to Pine Tree Arch(it has Pine trees in it) another to Tunnel Arch(it's an arch shaped like a tunnel) until we get a bit lost on one trail and end up walking in the hot sun for a couple of hours. We slide in-between upright smoothed rocks, scramble over petrified sand dunes and mope across hot open land and through a campsite before arriving back at the car totally knackered. Excellent.

Just 2 miles down the road from the park entrance is the town of Moab. Not a bad town but not a great one in any respect but it's definitely clear that the main business here is related to the park and that mainly consists of mountain biking. Plenty of shops and tour companies also exist for quad bikes and Jeep tours. Arches National Park is yet another giant playground. Not just for overgrown kids either, under one arch a group of kids are sliding and digging around in the sand.

It gets incredibly hot here in summer so I'm glad we're here now, it's hot enough. Saying that, if there's a place to come back to for some amazing mountain bike action then surely this must be one of the spots on the earth.

Before leaving the place we have some soup and bread in the sun overlooking the perched Balanced Rock, that surely would fall if there was a slight tremor and would probably be rolling through town if an earthquake hit.

As for the Arch featured on the Utah registration plate, it isn't that great but it's a simple instantly recognisable symbol of one of the best places I've seen on this trip.

Although the towns of Utah so far have been dull and uninspiring the landscape has been continually amazing. There's still more to come too but we just have to pop out of Utah before we come back to see it.