American author Edward Abbey once described Utah's Arches National Park as 'the most beautiful place on Earth', although he was gracious enough to concede 'there are many such places'. He needn't have looked far to find a few because, apart from Mormonism, landscapes are the thing Utah does best. This desert state is blessed with five magnificent national parks (only California and Alaska have more) forming a truncated A to Z - Arches to Zion - of natural reserves, arguably the United States' finest cluster of parks.
Arches This is where high fame and the Utah landscape intersect, with the park's centrepiece, Delicate Arch, about as Utah as the Mormon tabernacle. It appears on Utah vehicle number plates and on more book covers than the late Princess Diana. Each sunset, the walking track to the arch looks like a pilgrims' trail, and the sandstone rim around it becomes a grandstand of people. The scene is set for Delicate Arch, set atop a slab of rock like a suitcase handle, to flare in the sun's final rays.
Such is Delicate Arch's popularity that most of the park's supposed 2,000 other arches are left open to quieter exploration. The park's so-called Windows section offers views across the desert to the snowcapped La Sal Mountains, while the Devil's Garden features Landscape Arch, claimed to be the largest in the world. It is far more delicate than Delicate Arch: a 20-metre slab of rock fell away from it in 1991, leaving a part of it precariously thin and seemingly ready to collapse at any moment.
Bryce Canyon If Delicate Arch is all about sunset, Bryce Canyon is where the Utah sun rises. This string-thin plateau looks down into 14 amphitheatres crowded
with pillars of rock known as hoodoos. One of these amphitheatres impresses above all others: Bryce Amphitheatre, with its hoodoos like colourful stalagmites. Facing east, the rising sun catches the white tips of the hoodoos, turning them into virtual candles. Backlit, they glow like stained glass.
A variety of walking tracks descends from the plateau into Bryce Amphitheatre, where, having passed through the deep orange glow of the Wall Street slot canyon, you see the hoodoos appear - part Cappadoccia, part Gaudi and part a London skyline of chimney pots. From Bryce Amphitheatre, the road continues for 24km along a narrowing neck of land to Rainbow Point, the highest spot in the park, at 2,778 metres. There the plateau tips away past a scraggly grove of bristlecone pines - the oldest species of tree in the world - to a view that extends so far you fancy you might be able to see the Grand Canyon more than 100km away.
