Arches National Park

Sunday, Sept. 26 - This morning we grabbed a breakfast sandwich and a bag of ice at McDonalds, then headed to Arches National Park, just a couple miles out of town.  We stopped at the Visitors Center first, then headed up the hill.  There was an amazing amount of traffic here in this park today, and it was supposed to hit 89 degrees.  We took lots of pictures, and made one hike in the Windows section to get a close-up look at those arches.  There are supposed to be 2000 arches in the park, but we probably only saw 10 or 12.  There are lots of hikes in the park, and some secondary roads to arches that we did not take.  The beginning of the drive is full of rock formations, then they get a little more scattered, with valleys in between.  The campground is at the end of the drive, and it was full.  We did drive through it to see if we could have fit in, and there were a few spots that were big enough, but many were too small for our rig.  Here's some of the rock formations.

This next one was called "Three Gossips."

The one above was called "Balanced Rock."  The top rock is estimated to weigh 3500 tons.  We walked completely around this and couldn't imagine what made it stay up there.  There were many other balanced rocks in the park, like the one below.

 This was called the Turret Arch.

This is the hike we took.  These are the North and South Windows.  We started out on the main trail, but when we went behind these arches, we ended up on a primitive trail.  We were pretty warm by the time we got back to the parking lot.

Here's Joe on the climb to Turret Arch, and then when he gets to the top of the path.

These formations were called the "Fiery Furnace" which is supposed to be really beautiful at sunset.

It was a pretty impressive drive, but we thought the scenic highway coming into Moab yesterday was even more impressive.  We stopped on our way back through town and made reservations to take a boat ride tomorrow night on the Colorado River, so that should be entertaining.  In addition to the t-shirt that Joe needs that says "authorized person," he thinks he also needs a cap that says "service," since there are always lots of "service roads," that he is not allowed on.  Maybe he just needs a badge.