Our time in Arches National Park was pretty much spent hiking. No surprise there, I suppose. Our first hike was to Tower Arch, which is in one of the more remote areas of the park. To get to it, we had to drive down a long dirt road. As we skated along at 40 mph, lizards, birds and squirrels scampered in the road ahead of us. They all managed to get out of our way, luckily for them, because we weren’t planning on slowing down- the road gets much bumpier at slower speeds!
Delicate Arch will be familiar to a lot of people. It’s probably one of the most photographed rock formations, and it’s also on the Utah license plate. The hike to it was a few miles, all uphill on the way there, and it was quite hot, but so well worth it. The view was awesome and it was hard to describe, but it was just peaceful sitting on the rocks looking at the arch.
There are over 2000 arches in this park, and no, we didn’t try to see all of them. They are more interesting in person, since the pictures don’t give you an idea of exactly how huge they are. There are people in most of the pictures, which gives a little perspective.
The Three Gossips. We passed by this formation every time we came into the park and every time we saw it, it looked more and more like 3 gossips to me. By the time we left, I would swear you could see their facial expressions.
There is one hike in the park that you can only do by permit, or on a guided Ranger tour. The reason is because it’s exceptionally easy to get lost in “the Fiery Furnace”.
This hike lasted 3 hours although we walked less than 2 miles. The ranger made it interesting, as she pointed out various geologic features and discussed wildlife etc. She also had to demonstrate how to navigate the trail several times along the way. There were several places where we had to put our hands on one wall of rock, and our feet up against a different rock, and sort of “waddle” between the rocks.
There were about 25 people on the hike, all with varying degrees of ability, but no one that had any physical challenges. We had to talk to a ranger to make sure we had hiking boots, a backpack to leave our hands free, etc.
Not that there wasn’t enough hiking to do inside the park, but our friend Nancy had told us to make sure we do the Fisher Towers hike, and it’s not in the park itself. We took a day to drive out along the scenic road to get to this hike and I must say that I agree with Nancy, and it was my favorite hike (well, maybe Delicate Arch beat it out by a little bit). The rock formations are incredibly majestic and completely enormous!
Trying out my Panorama setting on my new camera:
I could post pictures of all the other arches and formations that we saw, but, why? You get the idea. Some were great, some were just ok, but they were all worth checking out.
