Rock Art

I really like this picture I took at Arches National Park, so I thought I would share. Along the hiking trails, rocks are stacked so you know you're on the path. This particular stack was by "Balanced Rock".

Fam Trip, Part Dos

The family fun continued Saturday with a trip to Arches National Park in the 100+ degree heat. It's a dry heat, so it's really not as bad as you think. However, it was still pretty warm. We took our time driving to Moab, Utah, making a stops along the Colorado River near Castle Valley. Here's John, Kevin and Kate. Kim decided to take a breather and recoup a bit from the full week of traveling and sightseeing. I would definitely need a vacation from a packed vacation!

The park was busy, but not as busy as it could be, which could have been due to the heat. I really like this picture of Kevin and Kate with the "Three Gossips" in the background.

Kate really enjoyed climbing all over the rocks. She's such a brave soul! This is much more treacherous than it looks. What you can't see is what they had to climb to get to this point at the "Double Arches".


As the day went on, clouds began to roll in, which made it much cooler (like 98). John took this picture as we were leaving the "Landscape Arch" area of the park around 6 p.m. or so.

Again, the mandatory glamor shot of me and John. I know you can't get enough of us! Do I sound conceited? Oh, well.

Thanksgiving Recap

I'm going about this a bit backwards, but I thought I would share some of the photos of my Mom's Thanksgiving visit. It was great to see her and we got to be tourists at Arches National Park. It was a wonderful time to go to the park because it was nice and cool.

Mom blending into the landscape.

Mom and I at the Double Arches.

Making the climb to Delicate Arch, which neither John or I had done before. It was quite a hike up hill most all of the 1.5 miles and with some treacherous ledges and such. This is the hike up the slick rock portion.

This was the prize at the end of the hike. Check out how small the person is under the arch. You can't tell all that well, but the rock that is around the arch slants to the right, much like a roof and then there's a ledge. John starts walking toward the arch and I hesitantly follow. Once I get three-quarters of the way to the arch, my knees are literally shaking and I wonder how in the world I'm going to get back to the trail, but I do with my knees knocking. I will never do that part of the trail again. If you come to visit, I'll hike out there with you, but I'll view the arch from a safe distance!


Me and Mom


Me and John at the Double Arches.

Friendly Visits

I've had a great couple days with my college friend Lisa. Being in the same state warranted a visit, so she made the drive from Denver. Who knew Colorado was so big? It takes four hours from Denver to Grand Junction!

Lisa said she had never been to Arches National Park, so I was glad to take her. Even though the temperature reached 101, we managed with plenty of water and air conditioning between our stops.

The most spectacular arches of the park - The Double Arches

The most famous arch in the park is Delicate Arch. It's on all the Utah marketing material and the license plate. However, the hike getting up to view Delicate Arch is not so delicate. It's a pretty steep hike, and when it's hot ... whew! I think the disappointing thing was we made the hike instead of doing the lazy man's lower viewing area and we seemed to still be three miles away from the arch. My camera was zoomed all the way in to get this photo!

Here's the little friend we made on the Landscape Arch trail. It was much bigger than a gecko, but it still seemed harmless. Here, Leezard, Leezard, Leezard ...

Finally on our way out of Moab, where we purchased ice cold beverages, we stopped at this foot bridge that crosses the Colorado River. It's a really nice bridge and trail that only adds to the charm of the area.

Arches National Park

I promised a while back to write about our trip to Arches National Park. We decided to drive down to Moab and visit the park earlier in the weekend. It was a beautiful day - chilly, yet sunny. We got into the park around noon and began our adventure ...

It began innocent enough with the mandatory picture at the sign.

And taking roadside pix.

We then decide to stop at Balanced Rock and try to take some self portraits ... but we're so tiny!

Then we stop at the double arches and take some goofy pictures. I'm so clever!

At the same double arches stop is this treacherous bit of hiking ... very slick but no falls.

To avoid going down this hillside skating rink, we decide to go around the double window arches on the primitive trail. Mind you we're not prepared. We both have on heavy coats, but we're not in hiking gear. I have on rubber soled ballet flats ...

It starts out well with spectacular views we wouldn't have seen otherwise. We continue to follow the snow tracks, but we're not sure if we're on the trail or not. We get to a point where we need to either go over these arches, go back the way we came or go over and around steep cliffs. My vote was to go back the way we came.... about a mile or so back ... but John went up a steep incline to see if he could see the parking lot from where we came.

Up the snow and ice cover cliffish incline, John found this.

To get to this, there was a lot of this ... which is much slicker and behind us was even more of a steep, icy incline, cliffish thing.

While John was taking these pictures, I was climbing up the icy incline, thinking with my gracefulness that I was surely going to fall back and really hurt myself. Remember ... ballet flats! So, I climbed up this on my hands and knees. Fun. Somewhere around that tree is where there was a place we could go over the rocks, down through an ice covered crevice that was VERY steep and where I proceeded to sit on the ice and scooch down the ice-covered rocks.

We did make it to the lot and had a good laugh after the fact. I really was scared, thinking that I was going to kill myself out there. I could see the headlines now, "Two ill-prepared 'hikers' found in Arches ... if only they had stayed on the trail ..." We couldn't find the trail!

We then went and took many more beautiful pictures throughout the park.

We're so small!

Three football fields could fit in the middle of this arch. This was quite a snowy hike to this arch, but we stayed to the well-marked trail.

Walking back to the car, we ran into this little guy. We thought it was a chipmunk type thing but it then jumped off like a kangaroo. It's rightly named a kangaroo rat.

Our final photo of the day.

This was a fun trip, and we didn't see everything there. It's definitely a park worth visiting, and we'll be sure to visit again with a pair of hiking shoes and gloves!