The drive along the river was awesome. Each view seemed better than the last. I had never been in this area before, and the rock formations were mesmerizing.
It was going to take awhile to get to Moab if I kept stopping every few minutes.
We could see the La Sal Mountains as we drove further along:
At some point I decided I had taken enough pictures of the river, and we pressed on towards Moab. After stopping to reserve a campsite along the river, we wasted no time checking out Arches NP. After walking around Balanced Rock, we drove towards the Window Arches. Along the road we passed the Cove of Caves:
A little further along, we got to the end of the road and the parking lot for the nearby arches.
There were a ton of people huffing and puffing on the short trail to The North Window. This is apparently one of the tour bus stops. Once under the arch, we climbed up a little ways for a better view. My ultrawide angle lens really came in handy on this trip.
The South Window Arch is right next door, and the Turret Arch a short distance away. A little further down the path we got this view of the two windows:
We decided to skip the nearby Double Arch for the time being, and instead drove towards the Sand Dune Arch.
The Sand Dune Arch was at the end of a short trail that squeezed through a set of towering sandstone fins. All the eroded sand was trapped between the walls, and a couple of young kids were playing with little shovels and buckets as if it were the beach. We left the trail and climbed higher through the fins to do some exploring:
After climbing back down, we hiked over to the Broken Arch, before making our way back to the car. The next arch we came to was the Skyline Arch:
This arch was especially awesome, because despite its proximity to the road, there were very few people that bothered to walk down the quarter mile path. The afternoon light was sublime, and we even found this blooming cactus nearby:
After a quick stop at the Fiery Furnace, we drove to the trailhead for the Delicate Arch - along with apparently everybody else in the park. The Delicate Arch is probably the most iconic arch in the park, and photos of it are widely reproduced. I figured the light would be good in the late afternoon, and it would be less crowded. Well, so did everyone else. Apparently this is a recommended sunset hike and this information is prominently displayed in park literature. After passing a bazillion people in the mile and half from the parking lot, we finally made it to the arch:
It was incredibly hard to take a picture without getting a whole bunch of people in it, as a disorganized line formed near the base of the arch full of people hoping to take all manner of inane photos underneath. After soaking in the arch for awhile (with at least a hundred other people), we decided to head back and eat some dinner before it got dark.
On the way back out of the park, we drove past Balanced Rock again. In seeing it from a different angle, Laura remarked that it was a "way better balancing rock" than the actual one, before realizing her mistake. The late afternoon light plus the dark storm clouds made for a much better photo than earlier in the day:
Back at our campsite, we discovered our tent had blown on its side. Had it been any less secure, it would have been floating down the Colorado River.
After staking it a little better, we ate a mediocre dinner of gnocchi and bad pesto. After redeeming the meal with chocolate covered pretzels and other snacks, we went to bed just after sunset in preparation for an early departure the next morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment