One of the many amazing things about Moab is that everything is right there: the hiking, the rock climbing and the mountain biking, which means that even if the boys finish at 2:30/3:00 pm, we still have plenty of time to go enjoy the outdoors with them. One afternoon, we stopped by the Arches National Park Visitor Center to get the kids Junior Ranger badge (and got an amazing ranger who spent more than 20 minutes answering all their questions with very interesting explanations about the rock formation in the park... Did you know that the arches were formed because the Navajo sandstone was pushed up by the salt in the soil?) and secure a permit to go explore the Fiery Furnace (an awesome maze of canyons in Arches NP that is usually only possible to visit with a guided tour) by ourselves in a few days and watched an interesting video teaching us about the biological soil crust and how to protect it by walking only on sandstone and sandy washes. We then headed to Corona Arch.

Corona Arch is one of the most impressive arch in Southern Utah and is much less crowded since it is outside Arches NP. Reaching it requires a 45-minutes fun romp, mostly on slickrock. Corona is mammoth: 140 ft high, with a span of 335 ft. Bowtie Arch is a bonus sight. It appears that a haywire missile from a passing spacecraft blasted through the back wall of its deep alcove...

You can read the crazy adventure that followed our visit to Corona Arch last time we were here...