Moab UT

Our calendar tells us we have to move on if we want to see any of Utah before we head home. We drive 178 northwest to reach our next destination, Moab Utah. The drive into Utah has some pretty interesting rock formations. Utah's nickname is the beehive state. This formation looks like a beehive to me, but we're told it's called Church Rock.










Once we reach Moab, we check out Yellow Circle dispersed camping, the ACT Campground and Environmental Learning Center, and the Sand Flats Recreation Area campground, none of which have much of a view. So we take the long, dusty, bumpy drive to the Willow Springs Trail, which is known as a popular dispersed camping area.

Very popular; felt like being in a campground...

A view of the line to get in (after we had gotten in)

Our retirement life philosophy seems to have become: "we'll get there when we get there", and we don't let common sense (like getting started early to beat the crowds and enjoy the cool morning) intrude on our days. As usual, we weren't in any big hurry to get going (aka slothlike). Arches was about a twenty minute drive from our camping spot. By the time we got there, there was a pretty long line to get into the park. It took about 1/2 hour to file into the park. We were surprised by the number of people visiting the park, especially since summer vacation was over, and most kids were back in school. Once we got thru the entrance, the traffic thinned out and the crowds were not that bad.

Our first stop was at Balanced Rock. There was a nice easy trail that circled the rock, so you could get up close and personal with it and see it from a 360 degree perspective.

We then continue north up to the Devils Garden area. This area has a campground, which was closed due to road improvements that affected the entire park. All park visitors had to be out of the park by 7 pm each evening, but I digress. The Devils Garden area is home to a number of rock formations, among them are: Tunnel, Pine Tree, Landscape, Partition, Navajo as well as others. 

Tunnel Arch

Landscape Arch

We spend a good deal of time there hiking up and around many of the arches before moving on.

Pine Tree Arch

Navajo Arch

From there we head over to the east side of the park to see Delicate Arch, which is the iconic picture you always see as the symbol of Arches National park. I'm not going to show a picture of it, since we decided not to take the trail to it and have only distant viewpoint pictures. 

On Wendy's insistence (this time), we have one more area to view which is on the east side of the park called the Windows Section. In that area you can see: the Parade of Elephants, North an South Windows, and Turret arches, just to name a few.

The sun was going down and we needed to start heading for the park exit and back to camp.