Elaina Around the World: Utah National Parks

Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Utah National Parks

8/9/16

Dear H-,

I heard you got home from your trip. How was it? Did you see any animals on the safari? Going to Kenya sounds like such an interesting trip.

Last night, I arrived in Arches National Park. This park is in Utah and is famous for its rock formations that look like arches. I didn't arrive until after 6 PM, so I had to hurry a bit to see some of the views.

It's kind of amazing to look around you and see towering red arches and spires made from rock. There are two very famous rock formations in the park. First, there is a formation called Balanced Rock. This is a rock that looks like it is balanced on another rock formation, kind of like this:

The crazy part is that this rock doesn't fall over. The other very famous rock formation is called Delicate Arch. It looks kind of like this:

A picture of this arch can even be seen on Utah license plates.

Fortunately, I had a little time to explore the park this morning. I was able to see more rock arches and even more rock formations.

My next stop today was Canyonlands National Park. Since I am traveling in a 4-wheel drive vehicle, I took a back road to get into the park. A 4-wheel drive vehicle is a car or a truck that has the drive mechanism working on all four tires at the same time. A regular car, like mine, has 2-wheel drive. Basically, 4-wheel drive means you can drive more easily on rocks, dirt, and on rough terrain ("terrain" means "ground").

The back road I used to get into Canyonlands was very bumpy in places and very steep in others. Sometimes, it was harrowing (very scary) to look out the window and see straight down a cliff!

As you can probably imagine, traveling on a rocky dirt road is very slow. I think the whole trip took about 4 1/2 hours to get to the park. On the drive, I saw petroglyphs (carvings in rock walls made by many, many years ago) and dinosaur tracks.