Arches Done

North Window and South Window Arches - from RV

We spent the day at Arches National Park yesterday, our plans were to get to the Devils Garden area where there are a number of arches you can hike to from one trail.  But first - this park is what we call 'tourist' friendly meaning you see many tourist buses parked, and gorges of people jumping in and out of them.  At the beginning of the park where there are huge sandstone monoliths of rock, one bus was stopped and bazillion Asians were standing around the bus with their netbooks and iPads and computers clicking away - a funny sight.  This park does not have many hiking trails,

Landscape Arch

very friendly for those who can't walk far - most trails to see an arch are about .2 mile long.  No ATVs, only 2 campgrounds where there are only 30 sights per place, don't have to worry about bears or other animals except rattlesnakes in the summer, no bicycling.  You can drive from the entrance of the park to the end where Devils Garden area is, in about 30 minutes.  One of the smallest parks we have been in.

Elephants &  Double Arches

We drove to the end of the road of Arches avoiding much traffic since they were stopping at all the sites from the beginning, and got a great parking spot not far from the entrance into the Devils Garden.  This is the area where Dave wanted to go to specifically because he remembered hiking here 25 years ago.  I remember not hiking this part back then - sitting it out due to a splitting headache.  We had decided we would hike as far as we could - the trail was marked at 4.2 miles and was rated as difficult the last 1.2 miles of it.  We made it to that difficult part, watched the people climb up and over and sliding around on the slickrock going up and decided not to go farther.

North Window and South Window Arches  up close

Still was lovely walk, able to view Tunnel, Pine Tree, Landscape, and Double O Arches without a problem.  We missed out on Navajo, Partition and Private Arch by not going further.  That's okay - I wasn't in the mood to skinny along on my butt or to jump between slickrocks to get from A to B.  Landscape Arch made history back in 1991 when a large part of it collapsed.  I remember reading about it and glad we saw it.

From this walk of Devils Garden we drove to The Windows Section and hiked to Turret, North and South Window Arches, and to see the Parade of Elephants (really looks like them) and saw Cove and Double Arches. Also - we can see North and South Window Arches from our campsite and here we walked right up to them.  How cool!  We are really red rocked out for sure now.  Then, stopped along the roadway on the way back out to see The Tower of Babel and the Courthouse Towers - both huge sandstone spires that do resemble their names.  Last stop was at the Park Avenue area where we viewed a beautiful valley and looking up to the left - I swear I could see a huge grizzly bear in the formation of the balanced rock.  This bear/rock is 35 feet tall!

A grizzly bear! Just kidding

Good day in the park.  We can understand a woman's conversation the other day when she said that they 'did Arches yesterday and today Canyonlands".  Yes, you can see Arches in one day - there is only one hike we did not do and that is called the Fiery Furnace where you have to get a hiking permit to go in - they only allow a small number of hikers a day to enter.  Again, that trail is rated strenuous and we aren't up to that.

And back here at the campground we are having fun still watching the ATVs and their RVs coming in.  We have new neighbors on both sides. The one is something else - a huge 44 foot diesel pusher Class A motor home - and we never have seen this, but it has rear kitchen and living room area, plus the bedroom is near the front of the unit.  This is totally reversed from anything we have seen.  They also have 2 ATVs with another 2 couples' truck.  Did I mention that Moab is considered the 'Mecca of ATVs in the world'?  Amazing!!!