Arches and Moab

As the crow flies, Arches is 150 miles from our camp at Lake Powell--by road, 250 miles on a two lane heavily traveled Hwy 191, so we traveled the 5 hours from Lake Powell to a new BLM camp site. We traveled through Winslow, AZ of Eagles fame and because we lost an hour and ran into a lot of road work we pulled into Sand Flats (a misnomer) Recreation area around 4pm on Wednesday afternoon. Let it be said there is a thin layer of dirt on EVERYTHING in the RV and car. We will not recover from this until we leave for Salt Lake City on Sunday. The camp site costs $20 a night --pretty costly for no services-- to park and on top of one of the prettiest mountains in the area. Since we have been here, we have found several BLM Campgrounds--first come first serve that probably cost the same. It was still inexpensive, the only limitation we found for us was that you could only run your generator between 8am and 8pm so we needed to be there 2 hours in the morning, then 2 hours in the evening. It was windy enough at the time that the air conditioner didn't get used much.

We were here 4 nights and had different neighbors each night
 

La Sal Mountain with her snow was the view out the RV

Thursday at Arches we drove the entire park and saw the magnificent arches and windows. We toured the village of Moab which is sort of a tired little dusty town with nothing but restaurants, hotels and adventure centers. Biking, rafting, ATV-ing are huge here. I busted my knee on one of the hikes and judging from the resulting scar I should have gone for stitches but not.

We thought it weird that we had not seen arches like this in any of the other parks

I think people gathered at the arches to commune with God

Turret Arch

Salt Valley was real green because of the unusually rainy spring 



There are over 2,000 arches throughout the park

Balance Rock looked like it was about to fall

Fins in this park are large, thin walls of rock

Look closely --this rock formation is called the Parade of Elephants

Love how they explain

The 3 Gossips and Sheep Rock

 

Friday we took the Ranger guided hike of Fiery Furnace (2 miles round trip over pretty rigorous terrain). Ranger Monica was full of information and we added to our lexicon--cryptobiotic soil. This is the crusty bacteria that grows on top of the sand to allow plants to grow --it is the difference between this place and arid deserts like the Mojave. They have had a lot of rain so everything is still real green. During the hike through the Fiery Furnace,  Ranger Monica gave us a note card and a pencil and told us to write down thoughts -- I wrote Scat (I saw some large animal poop, twice), pools (there were very pretty pools holding water and was probably the reason for the large animals through the canyons), and something else I don't remember. I asked Terry what he wrote: God gives us beautiful land and the responsibility to take care of it. I like his thoughts better. 

Fiery Furnace was truly different

Fitz holding up the arch

This fooled you into thinking Fiery Furnace would be an easy hike
 

Sunset at the Sand Flats Recreation was really the best we've seen in a while. We met a cute couple from Durango, Co that were camping there too. They were a couple of years out of Fort Lewis College in Durango and bicyclers-think Lance Armstrong. They were fun to talk to.

View from Sand Flats



4 wheelers, motor cyclists and bikers heaven

Moon and Sun up at the same time

We love our sunsets
 

Saturday we had the choice between going to Canyonlands National Park about an hour away or go white water rafting. About 30 years ago the Barksdale's neighbors, Bernie and Dale Schwid (who were about 30 years older than us) were on vacation and were said to be rafting on the Colorado River. Both of us said "how cool" so now we have a chance to be like the very admirable Schwid's --we took it. Our trip was OK--we took the mid-day trip 11-4, the water was up so it was more drifting down the river than rafting the rapids but we had a few opportunities to get wet. We had Mel as our guide and a family from Missouri (parents and 4 boys--17,15,13 and 10 years old) traveled with us so we had a lovely day.

We had a great Colorado River Ride