Arches National Park

The last day of my trip I spent at Arches National Park and Moab.  I had gotten some pretty good sleep the night before and wanted to get a good jump to the day because I was really excited about Arches.  The morning was once again overcast but I heard on the radio that it was supposed to clear out and be a beautiful day.  I made my way to Arches National Park and got myself ready to do quite a bit of hiking that day.  There were so many places I wanted to see in the park and was maybe a little overzealous in my ambitions for the day.  I first headed up to Devil’s Garden Trailhead to go see about four or five different arches on that trail.  This place will definitely make you feel very small and inconsequential.  When you first step foot on the trail you look up and see massive rock formations all around you and you are surrounded by them the whole trail.  First up was landscape arch, which was kind of hard to see at first because it blended in so well with its surroundings, but once you knew what you were looking for it jumped out at you.  From there if you wanted to see the rest of the arches, you had to climb up this very steep hill made up of one huge rock formation with other bigger rocks piled on top of it, that kind of made a sort of a stairway.  It was one of those things that you had to decide to do and just go for it.  Once you got going you better keep going until you made it to the top because if you decided to stop and look back you would freak out.  I figured I had made it this far on my trip with doing some pretty crazy things I might as well finish it up that way.  So I made it to the top and then trudged through quite a bit of sand to make it to the next two arches, which were Partition Arch and Navajo Arch.  From there I hiked over another series of rock formations that on a normal day would’ve scared the crap out of me, to get to Double O Arch.  It was supposed to be one of the best arches in the park, but I wasn’t super impressed with it.   I figured I might as well make it to the end of the trail so I hiked to the dark angel, which again wasn’t that impressive, but an interesting hike nonetheless.  My hike back to the trailhead seemed like it took forever, and going back down that steep hill was a little scary, but I made it safely back.  From there I drove a little ways to check out Broken Arch and Sand Dune Arch, both of which were really cool and had cool views along the trail.  By the time I got done with those I was pretty hot and tired and starting to feel sick so I decided to head back into town and get something to eat and cool off for awhile.  I had some lunch and figured I would get some shopping done since it was a Sunday and I figured the shops would probably be closing early that day.  Right when I started shopping it started to rain so I hung around in town for awhile to let the storm pass and then planned on going back out to Arches to finish up my hiking for the day.  It was still raining pretty good near the entrance to the park so I decided to drive to the farthest point in hopes that the storm had already passed up there.  I got lucky and it had stopped raining but it was still pretty dark and cloudy out.  I wanted to get some more hiking in so I started on the short trail from Park Avenue Viewpoint to Courthouse Towers Viewpoint.  I will have to say it was not the brightest idea that I’ve ever had.  It started raining again, lightly at first and then got heavier as I went and there was lightning in the distance.  I was down in a canyon in an open area, probably not the smartest place to be during a storm, but luckily I made it out ok.   It was pretty dark in the distance and you could see the storm pouring near the front entrance of the park so I slowly drove my way through and stopped and took pictures wherever I could.  There were still a lot of things I wanted to see, but the sun was starting to set already and I knew I only had the time to go to one more place so I chose Delicate Arch.  I had read that it was supposed to be the best at sunset and it was truly amazing.  It was another one of those hikes that kind of scared the crap out of me, but was well worth it.  There was a section where I got rained on and then had to hike up tiny little steps carved into the rocks.  Then after that you had to climb pretty much straight up for a good half mile, which kicked my butt.  From there you had to walk along a ledge until you got to where you could see the arch.  That’s when you had to make the decision of whether or not you wanted to walk out and get to the base of the arch or at least pretty close.  You had to climb over a ledge of rocks and into kind of a slanting bowl that had no middle,so if you fell you were kind of screwed.  Then you kind of had to shuffle your way around the bowl to get even close to the arch itself.  I was going to go down all the way to the base but there were already a lot of people down there so I got pretty close and took my picture.  The sunset that night was magnificent.  It lit up the sky with so many different colors of blue it felt almost eerie, but you could tell everyone up there enjoyed every minute of it and felt the hike up there was worth it.  The hike down was a little scarier because it had gotten pretty dark by then and I really didn’t want to fall down that steep hill, but I made it down just in time.  I tried to make it around to a few other places and take some pictures in hopes my flash would help me out, but it was too late.  I considered staying another day, but I had already planned on leaving that night so I figured I could just come back another time and finish up the rest.  Arches National Park and Moab are high on my list of places to revisit.  So many amazing sights to see and I only got to half of them.  I got my stuff in my car and took off on my way back to Kansas.  I drove all night, stayed up 23 hrs until I could barely keep my eyes open and then decided to stop and sleep for awhile.  My last picture of my trip I took was of a Kansas sunrise welcoming me back home……for now =)