Utah: Day 5 - Arches National Park

Tuesday was our last day in Moab before we started our three day canoe trip. We started the day preparing a bit for our canoe trip by picking up groceries and running a few loads of laundry at the laundromat. Next, we took a leisurely picnic lunch to a local green park and relaxed in the shade. We played some frisbee and some Uno (the card game, Simpson's version!). After lunch, we headed out into the heat again to find some petroglyphs - rock art from the Anasazi Indians. We drove down a highway near Moab and there on the cliffs alongside the road was the art. It's odd, since most of it is about 25 feet up the cliff wall - you can tell that they blasted away a lot of rock to put the road there. It seems that they must have lost a lot of the art in the blasting, which is a shame. It's also a shame when you see "Bobby loves Judy" scratched into the rock next to these amazing petroglyphs - some people just don't realize the value of the petroglyphs and ruin it for everyone. In any case, here are some pictures of the rock art:Our next trip was to Arches National Park. This park is actually quite large and I was a little disappointed that we had dallied so long in the park before going to Arches. In any case, we just visited two main portions of the park: Devil's Garden, which contains hiking trails and lots of arches, and later, the Delicate Arch region.
On our drive to Devil's Garden, we stopped at a few viewpoints and took pictures of some prominent structures. Sheep Rock:The Organ:Tower of Babel:Balanced Rock:We started our hike in Devil's Garden along with a bazillion other tourists, since the trail is basically a groomed path and allows you to see about five arches within 30 minutes of the road. So, we trekked along with the other tourists and took pictures of the arches as we went.
Here is Pine Tree Arch:It's probably the least interesting of all the arches we saw, but that's me in the middle of the picture.
Below is Wall Arch, which was pretty neat and ran parallel to the trail, so we took pictures viewed from both directions, forward and backwards.Landscape Arch, seen below, is the highlight of the light tourist tour. The groomed trail ends there and most tourists take pictures of it and head back. It definately is an impressive arch, large and very thin. In fact, about ten years ago tourists were allowed to walk right under the arch, but then there was a big rock fall and a big chunk of the arch feel down to the ground. After that, the park hasn't allowed anyone to get too close.We continued on the 'non-groomed' trail (which was really quite nice, just not groomed with gravel) to see Partition Arch. This arch was by far my favorite, and well worth the extra 10 minutes of walking to reach it. Not only did we not have to share the arch with anyone else while we were there, but the view was spectacular. There was another little peak hole just to the right of Partition Arch that Joelle and I climbed up into for this picture.The arch looking from the other side:Garrett, sitting on the far side of the arch:Eventually we'd had our fill of Partition Arch and moved onward to see Navajo Arch. Here's a picture of me on some interesting rocks along the way:Here is Navajo Arch. It's almost like the entry to a cave.We decided not to hike in the extra mile or so to see the last few arches, mostly because it was pretty hot out by that time. We went back to the car and went to a nearby picnic area to make the dinners that we had brought with us. After a yummy dinner and dessert, plus a quick game of Uno, we packed up and headed out to the Delicate Arch trailhead. Delicate Arch is the main viewpoint in Arches National Park, and is best viewed at sunset. So, again, we joined a huge crowd of tourists and hiked in to Delicate Arch. In fact, this trail is a decent hike up and in to get to the arch, with a round trip distance of 3 miles. Luckily, we were wearing our hiking boots and had our hiking poles, so we hoofed it up to the top of the trail, working up a bit of a sweat but making better progress than a lot of less prepared tourists. When we got to the top, we were welcomed with this view:Yes! Hundreds of other people! Yay!
Well, it wasn't super intimate but most of the people there weren't really annoying, except for those who would go down to stand in the arch, arms extended, to have their pictures taken. I don't want a picture of a stranger in the arch! Get out!
Garrett ended up taking a ton of pictures of Delicate Arch, fiddling with the settings on his fancy camera. I was his support staff and relaxed, watching the sun set and enjoying the breeze.Once the sun set, we headed back to town and camp to get to bed.