Robert Riberia’s Red Rock News

The new 18,000 square foot Arches Visitor Center is now open. I don’t normally get all that excited about visitor centers, but this visitor center is extraordinary. It’s loaded with very useful and informative interactive displays, an impressive theater that is better than many commercial facilities I have been in, a huge bookstore, and much more!

The new visitor center actually encompasses the old 6,000 facility, but you’d be hard pressed to tell where the old structure is. The spacious facility contains a massive replica of a sandstone arch, and features a wall of panoramic windows giving an unobstructed view of the surrounding red rock scenery.

The interactive displays, featuring a combination of computer graphics, digital imagery and video, are some of the best that I’ve come across in a national park visitor center. Even the small displays are very well done. Rhonda and I spent quite a bit of time at this unassuming little kiosk which contained detailed information about the flora and fauna within the park…

You could, for example, look up hundreds of wildflowers utilizing a variety of criteria, such as bloom time or color. This alone answers some of the most common questions that I have when visiting a park. I am not an expert on desert flora by any stretch of the imagination, but I love photographing wildflowers when they are in bloom. It takes seconds to track down the correct name of any flower in the park utilizing this system. The system worked equally well for wildlife, including reptiles. The center also contains many more elaborate displays that make it easy to spend quite a bit of time learning about the park…

The theater blew me away. I rarely watch the presentations in National Park Visitor Centers because they are usually pretty boring and the presentation is lacking. At Arches, however, I was blown away by the true theater-like auditorium and the impressive quality of the Discovery Channel produced program about Arches and Canyonlands. Some of the footage is spectacular! This show is guaranteed to get you pumped up about the natural wonders that you are about to explore. I strongly recommend watching this show in its entirety before you go proceed into the park, you will not be disappointed!