Portal RV Resort, Moab, Utah
Like a madman shooting firebrands or deadly arrows is a man who deceives his neighbor and says, “I was only joking!” ~ Proverbs 26:18-19
Sweltering!!
Today is our three-year full-time anniversary! Can you believe it’s been three years already?? So hard to imagine! In those three years, we’ve stayed at 148 campgrounds and taken thousands upon thousands of pictures. I know that in the past we’ve posted pictures from the previous year, but I simply don’t have the time it takes to go through them all in order to do that for you right now. Sorry, if you were anticipating that.
Our adjective for number four of Utah’s “Mighty Five” National Parks, Arches National Park, is . . . .
Ready?
Monumental!
It means: serving as or resembling a monument, highly significant, of or relating to architecture, very great. Those all sound like what we saw today inside Arches National Park! This park is known for its namesake – arches. At over 2,000 documented arches, the Park contains the world’s largest collection of natural sandstone arches. Plus, there are pinnacles, balanced rocks, fins and other geologic formations.
But if I’m ever to get caught up with this blog, we simply MUST stop taking so many pictures. Today’s count? 383 before I went through them. And we only visited eight of the 2,000 arches. (Not all our pictures today are from those eight arches. lol) So there needs to either be fewer pictures for me to go through, or do less during the day instead of flying around from sunrise to sunset. Probably a combination of both would be a good idea. We’ll both have work on that. 😊
Even though the Park is really close to our campground – only three miles, but once you’re inside the Park itself, the road is about 20 miles long, and it’s slow going. Today, our first stop was to visit the iconic Delicate Arch – a driving distance of 15 miles, plus a 2 ½ mile spur road. And then we had to hike 1 ½ miles on a difficult trail to get to the arch. So even though we left home by 7:30am, we didn’t arrive at the arch until 8:40am.
up switchbacks into the “park area”.
Stunning!
Many others had the same idea.
And we saw some who shouldn’t have attempted such an arduous journey, even in the morning, because temperatures soar quickly here. Some were out of shape and had trouble catching their breath, some didn’t display any obvious signs they were carrying water. But most of whom we saw, were fine and just as excited as we were.
At first we thought maybe we were just in the midst of a group of people who started out at the same time – – you know, like when you go to check out at the grocery store and everyone else gets the same idea? So we took a quick detour to check out the Wolf Ranch.
But we soon realized that the crowds were only going to get larger, so we shuffled into line and tried to keep as much distance between us and others as possible.
The lighting’s much better that way! : )
We noticed people were lining up to take their turn at picture-taking inside the arch, so we made our way over to engage in the ritual.
look through this small arch toward Delicate Arch.
That’s a lot of people!
On a narrow trail.
We stood and waited, until there was a break we could take advantage of.
Once we returned to the trail head, there’s a spur you can walk to check out some “newer” petroglyphs. We could immediately tell they were more contemporary because there were men on horses. 😊
It’s not even mentioned on the information board.
Back at the Jeep, we noticed even more people, and many lined up to use the restroom. Crazy busy place! And we found ourselves hoping the entire day wouldn’t be like this. It wasn’t. Thank goodness!
There are other options to seeing the arch if you’re not up for the long trail. They have two different view points you can check out, but as you can see, they’re just not the same.
It’s there. You have to look close.
Now. My question is.
With all the exploring we do, why is it that neither of us thought to walk
to the other side of the arch to get the proper lighting on it???
It was so far away, we didn’t even take a picture, except to zoom in all the way.
Our day continued up the main road all the way to end, with several stops and hikes along the way.
allowing their children to play – – some in the sand, older ones climbing on the rocks.
All were barefoot. : )
We thought to see how we fared in the heat before hiking the entire way around.
Looks pretty intimidating, doesn’t it?
I had to follow, because we’d decided to commit to the rest of the loop.
And no one followed us.
That’s less than half a mile.
Then again, it’s only been 13 minutes since we left the arch.
Must be the heat . . .
But look at the wanna be arches on either side!
Isn’t that incredible?!?
We had seen the back of a man in the distance walking towards the campground as we approached the arch sign, but he’s no where in sight since.
He was the only person we saw the entire hike, once we left Broken Arch.
There were several of these still up.
People lost their reservation, just like we did at the Grand Canyon South Rim. : (
Parking lot’s still packed.
enjoying the Jeep’s air conditioning as we ate our lunch.
And the question on everyone’s lips?
How’d that guy in the picture on the information board get up there???
Blaine’s standing on the broken pieces from the rock fall.
There’s no way up there, or you know he’d be there. : )
There are actually two arches here.
The second, much smaller one is on the left.
Don’t know how big this one is either, but with the people included,
I’ll bet you could take a good guess at it. : )
(or something like them, anyway)
And then.
We checked the gas gauge and decided to take a more scenic drive back. If you look at the map, you’ll see a solid gray line that heads out just below the Devils Garden Campground. It intersects with a dashed road line. We took that and drove over and around and up and down to see Tower Arch.
Must be important . . . it’s red . . .
We’ll never know though, because Blaine didn’t stop to check it out. : )
We found it.
There was supposed to be a trail to it, and although we traipsed all over, we didn’t find it and gave up to continue our drive home.
Down the dashed road towards Herdina Park and the Eye of the Whale Arch (this one was so small and so far from the road, we couldn’t take a picture of it), until we connected with the main road at Balanced Rock.
This one is posted at this end of the road.
Probably due to construction, and maybe there was an accident to boot?
Whew! What a drive Blaine had! It was only around 20 miles, but it was very technical and difficult Jeeping. We had a blast! One of his friends asked if he gets nervous on these roads, and he told him that he doesn’t get nervous per se, but his adrenaline pumps and he finds it fun. That’s good, because we sure see some wonderful things when we take those Jeep roads!