Monday, May 6, 2024 The Wanderers: Arches National Park

First stop on our tour of the sights in the Southwest was Arches National Park. We had signed up for 7:00 a.m. entry time to beat the crowds and get better sunlight for photos. It’s a truly awesome place – everything you see tells the story of water receding from a worldwide flood, but the standard explanation at their visitor center for all these gnarly rock formations was of course wind, rain and erosion over “billions of years.”

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We stopped at the first turnout and took a bunch of photos and I declared enthusiastically that we should stop at EVERY turnout. We were young then. After a few of them, we realized that we didn’t need to take photos of every scene –  a lot of it looks the same.

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We made a pit stop fairly early along the way and while I was waiting for Kris, I found the cutest little wooden mushroom that someone had put in a tree. I also took an “artsy” shot through the side of a grill because…oh, I don’t know why. I just do these things and hope for the best.

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We stuck to just a few main items of interest, taking a few small hikes along the way (accumulated 4 miles of walking by the end of the day though – and the equivalent of 22 flights of stairs). We stopped at Balanced Rock, Double Arch, the North and South Windows and the Delicate Arch (the iconic arch that you see on photos of Arches NP).

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When we were looking at the North and South Windows, Kris hiked a little farther down than I wanted to go. As I was standing there getting photos of him next to a large rock formation, I mentioned to the couple next to me that it was nice having him there for perspective. Otherwise, you don’t really get a feel for how big these rock formations really are when you look at the photos. The couple, from Indiana, agreed and proceeded to take photos of Kris as the representative human showing perspective (and Kris somehow heard our discussion and hammed it up). I joked that he should start charging a fee for posing. The lady said, “If he’d show a little leg, I’d pay him.” We laughed about that so much. I had to tell Kris later since he hadn’t heard that part.

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There’s a 3-mile hike you can take to Delicate Arch from the North and South Windows, but it was a long steep uphill climb, so we decided to drive over and take the shorter hike that only gets you within viewing distance.

On our way up the short hiking trail to the viewpoint for Delicate Arch, it was rough going – very steep uphill. I had to stop along the way a couple times to get my breath, leaning against the boulders. One couple was coming down and I remarked that I was just enjoying the scenery and NOT having to take a break. The wife enjoyed that and went along with it, “Yes, those rocks also need a little holding up – you’re doing a good job!” So after that I had Kris get a photo of me “holding up” a rock on the wayside.

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Anyway, everything was really stunning and we enjoyed scrambling all over to see the sights and take photos. After we finished driving all the way through the park, we went back to the entrance and stopped in at the Visitor Center around noon to get our NP Passport stamped and I bought a sticker. Big spender!

Next stop: Canyonlands National Park

I’ll probably delete this in the morning…like usual.