Continuing on from yesterday. Again LOTS and LOTS of photos under the cut...
May 17: Arches, Arches and Sneezes
We woke up Tuesday morning in
Arches National Park to pouring rain, put on our brave faces and our rain gear and headed off to see some arches. By some wonderful miracle, the skies cleared the moment we stepped on to the first trail. Glory, glory hallelujah.
The first trail was labelled, I later found out, strenuous. Actually, I didn't find most of it particularly challenging, though I imagine in hot, hot sun the long open stretches on the sandstone rock would be not much fun. But in the cool weather we were in it was quite nice.
At the start of the trail there is an old cabin, which used to be home to a Mormon settler and something like 10 family members. It's TINY. I can't imagine how they all stood in there, let along ate or cooked or slept.
I fully admit that seeing that the hiking trail went straight up the side of this GIANT rock sort of made me go, "really? really?" but it wasn't that hard to climb. OK, so I did huff and puff a bit, but you won't hold that against me, right?
At the bottom (can you see the wee little specks of people at the top?):
Success! At the top, looking back down the trail:
Various rocks & things along the way:
And, finally, the arch! Called Delicate Arch:
Me, red faced & sweaty because I naturally turn red when I hike and also because I didn't put on sunblock because of the early rain. oops.):
For size perspective, some college kids walked along the ridge and stood under the arch. They look so teeny.:
At the bottom of the trail there were some Petroglyphs:
After Delicate Arch, we decided to do a very easy trail, and so went to Double Arch, also known as "the cat's eyes":
South Window:
Across the valley:
North Window:
And them together (on the "primative trail"):
Then we went into town, (Moab, Utah) for grocery shopping and to buy me cold medicine, as a full blown head cold had settled in while on the second trail. Urgh. I don't actually remember much of Moab, though Mom says it's a cute town, as I was sleeping in the RV through most of it.
After being fortified with cold meds and orange juice we headed back to the park, stopping at a few lovely viewpoints:
We decided to take one last hike for the day, and headed over to Landscape Arch. The trail there was easy and fairly crowded. It was especially crowded considering all the guide books say to do this hike in the morning because that's when you get the best light for photographing the arch. Guess there were lots of people like us who don't pay attention to those things. Thankfully, I managed to snap most of my pictures without anyone blocking the views:
Landscape Arch, which is (if I'm remembering correctly) 2 football fields long:
On the way back on the trail we decided to take a side route and see two other arches. That trail was deserted, which made seeing them even more lovely.
Tunnel Arch:
Pine Tree Arch:
That was it for the day, we headed back to the campsite, ate dinner and were asleep before 9:00 pm. Such a wild bunch of rowdy travelers we were, huh?
To be Continued...