Day 49 Arches National Park

Day 49

July 29

Moab

71 degrees at start of day (average of 100 degrees in July) 

Arches ($10 NPP) The aforementioned rain ruined our plans this day to see the Delicate Arch as the road was washed out.  So we went to the Devils Garden way on the edge of the park.  Along the way we saw many countless Pelonis’s (a more polite word  we have come up with to describe a body part). Parking was scarce back in this area (due to no one seeing the Delicate Arch perhaps?).  We get to the trailhead to start our .9mile hike to Landscape Arch, the longest arch in the world (??), almost 3 football fields long.  Back in 1991 a lucky tourist was filming the arch when part of it came crashing down! Such a story for that man and his family. We scrambled a little further up the path, over boulders following cairns to the next turn. We found the partition arch first and started having a picnic underneath.  Unfortunately a French family came traipsing through right then, and to not be an Arch Hogs, we moved to a less spectacular lunching area. 

Another arch beckoned us! Onward and upward we go.  Brian and Sullivan went ahead.  They found the Navajo Arch.  Seth found a rock wall to conquer.  It took what felt like 30 minutes to get up the wall but he didn’t want to give up.  He forgot however, that if it is hard to get up, it will be hard to get down.  After some coaxing he made it up.  It was then he realized he didn’t know how to get down.  Brian came back to us just then and helped his first born from being left out in the wilderness of Arches to fend for himself.   Sullivan had to show me what he found up ahead so we followed.  There was a wall that had naturally formed foot holds!  Quite the place.

I notice on the way up and back that there were few English speakers on the path.  I heard Russian, Spanish, French, German but very little people from the good ole US of A.  It was very interesting.

It was at this time that I was exhausted from all the work required to get just to here.  We had but a ½ bag of Doritos left to eat.  I said it was time to walk back the 1.5 miles.  Sullivan agreed, Seth did not.  He stayed back with Brian to keep climbing. We met up at the trailhead and went back to the hotel after getting some linner at a diner in town.   That evening we went to Canyonlands  ($10NPP, no one was at the both so we were supposed to pay at the self pay place) and stopped at one overlook.  The Blue John Canyon, where Seth really wanted to go hoping he was going to see Aron Ralstons accident sight, was in the inaccessible part of the park unless we had a high clearance vehicle, which the van is not.