The Arches started out with marks against it. The queue to enter was half a mile long (the distance from the turnoff to the entry according to my GPS). And when I was half way to the entry, someone went down, and let a lot of people behind me through (bypassing the entry). As I have an annual pass, I would have been one of them if I had been further back. The park has several rock arches - hence its name. There is also a possible previously existing arch which would have been much larger than any existing arch. I wasn't terribly impressed by the arches. One is on the Utah number plate, and is much smaller than I expected. However, there are a lot of very tall almost two dimensional rocks, and big rocks sitting on much smaller rocks.
Dead Horse looks out over the Colorado river which is 2000 feet just about straight down. Canyonlands looks out over more of the Colorado valley, as well as the Green river valley. If I read the information right, at one place you were 5000 feet above the river. There were some very serious cliffs around, and the whole land had been etched out by the rivers. It was amazing. As it was very misty, the photos aren't good but if you look hard you can see the Colorado about where the front cliff is white. The river twists vigorously and the gorges at the side are also the Colorado. The park originally had uranium mining and gas exploration. This is a desert area with 10 inches of rain a year.
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