Clear blue skies, miles of red-rock vistas, a sprinkling of green pinyon pine and juniper trees and an extraordinary collection of sculpted rock windows ... briefly describes Arches National Park. Here in east-central Utah over 2000 catalogued arches range from a tiny three foot opening to one of the world's largest arches. Graced with towering slabs of sandstone, odd shaped pinnacles and balancing rocks, Arches Park offers a unique story of Utah geology. Freeze and thaw cycles, extreme tempertatures and underground salt layers are all part of the geologic story in this wonderland of windows. The same erosional forces, that help create arches and destroy others, are still at work. Although a rarity, a few Arches visitors witnessed a sandstone slab breaking loose from Landscape Arch. Another rare event in August, 2008, Wall Arch, adjacent the Devils Garden Trail, gave in to gravity and surprisingly collapsed.
   These Spectacles from The Windows Section of the park may not help you see any better, but add a little humor to the interesting sculpted rock scenery in Arches National Park. Just by chance these two arches, the North and South Windows, lie side-by-side and make up the huge eye-glasses. Visitors, walking closer to the huge opening on the right, give some hint of scale to these wonders of nature. To get an unhindered view of the Spectacles, a primitive loop trail circles behind the rock formation and usually takes about 20 minutes.
   The area, categorized as desert, is only covered in a very sparse amount of plant life. Unlike arches and natural bridges in the eastern half of the United States, which are sometimes covered in vegetation, Arches Park offers an unhindered view of all these immense sandstone wonders.

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