Day Twenty-one of Western Adventures

 

After yesterday’s “audible call” for a wonderful tour detour to Capitol Reef, today we are back on track and ready to visit Park # 13, Arches National Park.  Some superstition kicks in, and we are a little nervous about stopping on this number, but a quick search doesn’t show another park even close to our planned route home.  Guess we will end our adventures with lucky # 13.

 

We have had more rain overnight and for the first time, we start our day with cloudy skies, cooler temperatures and most of us have jackets on.  There are no food establishments in the park, so we stop at the market to pick up sandwiches and plan to picnic in the park.

 

Arches is another of the smaller parks and if you don’t plan to hike, it is basically a one way drive in and same way out.  The Arches encompasses yet another strange set of rock formations, unlike most we have seen in any other park. From Fodor’s.com/parks comes this description: “In Arches National Park some of the most unimaginable rock formations in the world stand in testimony to the power behind the Earth’s movement and erosional forces.”  

       

The park lies atop an underground salt bed that is responsible for the arches, spires, balanced rocks, sandstone fins and eroded monoliths of this mecca for sightseers.  Thousands of feet thick in places, this salt bed was deposited across the Colorado Plateau 300 million years ago when a sea flowed into the region and eventually evaporated.  Over millions of years, the debris was compressed as rock, possibly a mile thick.  Salt under pressure is unstable and the pressure of the rock caused the salt to shift, buckle, liquefy, and reposition itself, thrusting the rock layers upward as domes and cavities.  Today the layers of Navajo Sandstone and Entrada Sandstone stand much like a layer cake across the park.     

 

 

      

 

 

 

The park showcases over 2, 000 arches.  To be defined as an arch, a rock opening must be in a continuous wall of rock and have a minimum opening of 3 feet in any one direction.  With this clear definition in mind, we start the hunt for the first of 2,000 arches.  We eventually find some that meet the criteria, and we stop for the obligatory photo op.  However, as the morning progresses, we find ourselves coming up way short of 2,000 arches.  In the rain, hiking is not an option for the girls, and we leave it up to the guys to get the photos.  Numerous rock formations have been named by some unknown naming committee, and we have even more fun naming some of our own.    

  From the shelter of our car, we can see the two guys in the arch.

       

As we all tried for the perfect photos to match those in the travel guides, we are totally convinced that those must have been taken by photographers with off-road permits to places we are not allowed. There is just no way we can make our photos look like theirs, and we can’t blame a cloudy, rainy day either.    This is one of those travel brochure photos.

 

Some of our favorite rocks were this lovely turquoise color which we found out were colored  sandstone with chlorite or iron silicate.

 

 

Throughout the park, there are huge boulders that have tumbled from their perches who knows how many years ago.   

 

As we exited the park, someone’s sharp eye spotted two climbers and we had to stop to photograph and watch a bit.  Climbing is permitted in the park, but not on any structures named on the USGS maps. ( Geological Survey)    

 

While our photos may not be perfect, we all have those precious memories that can never be taken from us nor duplicated by any technology.  Lydia brought the Purdue flag along on the trip so we could take our photo with it, and it looks like we have waited until nearly the last day and in the rain at that, but we still make the effort.

 

 

 

.

Day Twenty of Western Adventures

We awoke today to slight showers after the high winds last evening.  We left Tropic and our cabin and were on the road.  We made the decision to follow our trip plan and were rewarded with more spectacular scenery.  We had contemplated going to Capitol Reef, but did not make the turn in that direction.  We saw so many more sights as we left the Bryce Canyon area.

      

 

          Mt. Delano at 12,173 feet.  First snow we have seen since Glacier.

                               Tiny town of Torrey before we entered Capitol Reef.

 

As we progressed on our trip, we had a second chance to see Capitol Reef and we took this one, diverting our tour to this national park not on our itinerary. This is the most serendipitous decision of the trip.  We were not disappointed as we spent most of the afternoon in the midst of such canyon walls that defy any description.  Again, our memories will serve us far better than any of our photos, but we have these to share with all our blog followers.  So many of these rock formations were definitely “in your face”, and we felt as if we could touch them.

 

                

 

     

 

                   

 

    

 

                        

                         This one we call chocolate peanut butter pie.  Doesn’t it look delicious.

For the first time on the trip, we are able to see petroglyphs.  Bob read this morning that these at one time had been defaced/erased by vandals and have since been restored. 

We leave Capitol Reef with regret and travel along the road to Moab and our condo for the evening.  Outside the park, we encounter even more photo opportunities.  The different rock formations never end.

                               

 

We have some rain along the way in an area that looks as if it might receive only 10 inches a year, and we are in the middle of half of it!  Our drive to Moab is rewarded with even more spectacular scenery and we haven’t even seen Arches National Park yet.

Late afternoon finds us at our condo, checking in to fabulously fast internet and everyone is happy!!!  The condo is gorgeous and we settle in to our home for a night.  It is laundry time and we manage to clean some of our clothes….enough to get us back home.  From now on, we have no reservations, so we drive until we decide to stop  ( what a novel idea!)

                                    

                                 We love our condo and wish we were staying more than one night.

 

After relaxing, we are out for an evening meal at the Moab Micro Brewery.  WOW, this is a happening place.  We are seated quite promptly and enjoy a nice meal. After visiting the City Market, home it is, and we try to find our way in the dark!  The night skies out here are REALLY, REALLY dark.

Day Nineteen of Western Adventures

We are on our way today to Bryce Canyon in Utah.  Overnight, we have charged all our toys as well as ourselves and are ready for another day.  We aren’t on the road very long before we encounter the rock formations that are a prelude to Bryce itself.  

As we enter Utah, we have another time change.  We have all lost track of how many times we have changed time zones, and all our devices don’t automatically change, so we never know who really has the right time. Usually time is irrelevant, so we ignore the changes.

 

By the time we reach Bryce Canyon, it is lunch time, and we decide to eat in the Lodge at the park.  Bryce Canyon is viewed following an 18 mile road through the park.  All the lookout points are on the left side, so it is suggested that you go to the end, turn around and start back with all the lookout points now on your right side.  There are a total of 14 points to see the canyon and we didn’t miss a one.  The canyons or amphitheaters are filled with walls, fins, spires, columns and hoodoos—all from the sandstone formed by wind, water, snow and ice.  Early Scottish Mormon pioneer, Ebenezer Bryce was reputed to have said, “ It is a helluva a place to lose a cow!”

 

 

           

   

 

The wind was fierce at times as we climbed to 9,115 feet elevation, and the temperatures dropped to as low as 53 degrees.  Lydia remarked that “ this was a two-jacket park”, and we all agreed.   Happy to use all those jackets we have moved around in the back of the car dozens of times.

 

As we left the park, we were stopped dead in out tracks as a prong horn antelope jogged across the road in front of us.  He left behind an entire herd that stayed sheltered in the forest to our right. Other than a hawk in a tree, these were pretty  much all the wildlife we saw in the park.

 

We left the park and headed toward Tropic, UT, where we stayed in a duplex cabin. We didn’t have too many choices for dinner, but were pleased with a small restaurant serving very good meals.  As we retired to our cabin, the wind picked up and was blowing with terrible force, maybe as much as 50-60 miles an hour. We weren’t aware of any severe weather warnings, nevertheless, it was rather disconcerting.  We had rain overnight and woke up to scattered showers.