UTAH

Posted on February 2, 2016

Not all National Parks are created equal. While each park has something unique to offer, not all can leave you with a ‘this is way too awesome my jaw just dropped’ face.

I have visited a few iconic National Parks from various parts of the world and one that made me do such face was Arches National Park in Moab, Utah.  What’s so special about Arches National Park you may ask, well it just so happen that it contains the world’s largest concentration of natural sandstone arches. It is said to have over 2,000 arches located within the park’s 76,518 acres.  It’s MASSIVE. It also contains an astounding variety of other geological formations that my geologist friends will go gaga for. You can go wiki it for more info but I’ll let my pictures do the talking.

From LA, our tour bus traveled 550 miles and crossed 2 time zones to reach Utah.  Emma and I took a Chinese tour bus and we’re the few non-Chinese tourists aboard. The tour guide would hardly explain things to us in English which was quite frustrating but the random movies and road side views kept us entertained and sane lol.

Our roadside views

I visited the Grand Canyon the previous year so I was kinda expecting something similar, but I was still blown away with the sandstone formations.

About to start our trek in the scorching heat.

 

First stop, ‘The Organ’.  I always envy people that get to decide the names for these stuff.

Guess our smiles say it all. ‘Three Gossips’ photobombed.

Photo opportunity from every angle.

Check out the cloud formation not wanting to be outshone by the arches.

Blending in literally.

This should give you some idea of just how big these arches are.  Enough to make you feel insignificant. What an amazing earth we live in.

Another part of Utah that we checked out was The Great Salt Lake which is said to be the fourth-largest terminal lake in the world.

Checking out The Great Salt Lake Marina

It may not look like it, but I was close to vomiting here.  The view is nice especially early morning but the smell is just foul. Unfortunately, The Great Salt lake stinks, especially in the summer.  Apparently it’s because most hyper-saline environments favor bacterial sulfate reduction and one of the byproducts is hydrogen sulphide that smells like rotten eggs. Unfortunately, I made a silly mistake of wearing nice sandals and the smell and wet sand kind of stayed and ruined them. Ah well.

Of course a visit in Utah is not complete without checking the state capital, Salt Lake City. Obviously named after the salty inland lake, the city is also known as the Mormon capital of the world.  However, according to statistics, non-Mormon population has been on a steady rise for the last decade.  We only got to explore a few popular spots, (i.e. The Tabernacle, Temple Square, LDS Conference Centre and Utah State Capitol) but from what I’ve seen, Salt Lake City is a pretty neat and peaceful place to live.

Temple Square

Hard to capture the whole building because it’s huge

Inside Utah State Capitol

We stopped by this random Chinese Restaurant in Fillmore for lunch and it’s like in the middle of nowhere so I’m surprised to find out that it used to be Utah’s state capital.

 I would love to go back to Utah and explore the Mighty 5 National Parks (Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef and Zion National Parks) one day, soon.  Here’s hoping.

Geri xoxo