We stayed in Hurricane, Ut. while visiting Zion National Park. It is just off of I-15 and close to the entrance of the park. We boondocked at Walmart along with many other RV’er. I’m surprised, that this time of year it is so busy around here. We could not find an open site at any of the local RV parks. It must be the climate. It is in the upper 70’s during the day and low 60’s at night. I would characterize the area as a high desert area which just sucks any moisture out of the air and creates beautiful clear blue skies.
We have been here for 3 days and it is time to move on. We left this morning with again perfect clear blue skies and a comfortable 60’ish. We got on I-15 and headed north. About a 100 miles up the road we climb to about 8500 feet elevation and landed right in the middle of a snow storm. Lucky enough, the next exit was a rest stop. The outside temperature was 34°F and the snow was blowing horizontal. What have we got ourselves into? We waited it out for about 30 minutes and the clouds broke up. Nothing stuck and we were back on the road. After a few more mountains to climb, we took I-70 east through some more mountains and after 275 miles, we ended up in Green River Utah.
Green River is about 50 miles from the Arches National Park. Again, it must be this time of year that the parks are so busy. There were no RV sites to be found anywhere close to the park.
Our day at the park was again awesome. We both agree that we like this park better than Zion. The rock formations where indescribable and pictures didn’t capture the true visual effect. But I went wild with picture-taking as the visual view had to be captured.
What made the arches
The Park lies atop an underground salt bed that is responsible for the arches. The salt bed are thousands of feet thick in places, this salt bed was deposited about 300 million years ago when a sea flowed in the region and eventually evaporated. Over millions of years, residue from floods, winds, and the oceans that came and went blanketed the salt bed. The debris was compressed as rock.
Salt under pressure is unstable, and the salt bed lying below Arches was no match for the weight of this thick cover of rock. The salt layer shifted, buckled, liquefied, and repositioned itself, thrusting the rock layers upward as domes and Arches.
Most of the rocks in Arches National Park owe their brilliant color to the presence of iron. When iron oxidizes, similar to a nail rusting, it gives the rock a red color.
Our Overnight Stay
We stayed at A/Ok RV Park in Green River, Utah. It was the only available park and we needed to dump tanks. This place used to be a KOA but it has seen it’s better days. We used our Passport America discount and got the first night at half price, $17.50 and the second night $35. We have water, 30amp and sewer. The best amenity was the wifi, plenty of bandwidth.
