Moab, Corona Arch

Monday. What a beautiful day!  Went on a hike to Corona Arch.  This arch is not in Arches Nat'l Park.  In fact, many are not.  Before we got to the turnout for the trailhead to the arch, we stopped by the roadside to look at some petroglyphs.  These ancient Indian drawings are supposed to be 2-4 thousand years old.  If that is the case, they are much older than the petroglyphs at Valley of Fire near Vegas.

 This picture shows a couple pointing up to the drawings.  It was a large area, referred to as a "newspaper". pretty cool.

 Next was our first view of Corona Arch as we rounded a "corner" of sandstone on the trail..  Note the people for a size reference even at this distance.  Corona Arch is a partial free standing arch, attached to the hillside on one end.  To the left of Corona arch you can see Bowtie Arch, the large circle in the hillside with light showing through from the top.

 This pic was taken from the other side of the arch.  Again, note the people under the arch....and note the people on top!

 This group, we learned was a family, came to repel off the arch!  The arch is 175 feet high.

                                                                There he goes!!!

Corona Arch is on the left of this picture to try and give some idea of size/layout of the area.

                                                              Close up of Bowtie Arch

                                    A bit of the Colorado River as we hiked back to the jeep.

                                                               Then we drove a couple of 4x4 trails

 This next pic is of the Gemini Bridges.  These parallel "bridges" were formed by water.  Difficult to see in the pic.  Look for the people at the back left of the pic and you can see in front of them 2 holes separated by sections of rock.  From my angle you can see the large hole in the face of the rock, well there is another just like it behind that one.  Really cool.  There is a trail down in the canyon to see the bridges by looking up which we are adding to our list.

                     You can see the trail down in the canyon for the bridges.