This landscape was perhaps most memorably celebrated in Southwestern author and self-proclaimed “desert rat” Edward Abbey’s 1968 classic, Desert Solitaire, partly based on his days rangering in what was then Arches National Monument. No place in the world can boast as dense a concentration of natural rock arches as southeastern Utah’s Arches National Park, set right on the doorstep of Moab and showcasing some incomparably gorgeous-and legitimately surreal-topography. Article Overview: Best Hikes in Arches National Park