After a great night in Denver, Laura and I woke up and went for a beautiful Colorado run. There was a local park path with a great stream running along the side. I wanted to go for 30min, but Laura talked me into an hour. We got a little lost on the way back, so it ended up being a bit more than an hour.
Upon return, we were treated to breakfast and sandwich fixin's to prepare more lunch supplies for the day's travel. We got on the road at a much more casual time of roughly noon, headed for Arches National Park. As we approached the park, Laura noted a road, highway 128, on the GPS that appeared to be more dir
ect. We very hesitatingly took the route, almost turning around.... thank God we didn't turn around. It turned out to be one of the most beautiful portions of the trip.
Our first official hike of the trip was on this memorable highway 128. Despite it's name, it was just a lightly traveled two lane road, not a 4 lane high speed highways as the name may imply. While driving we quickly noticed large solitary hills on either side of the road. I promptly pulled off the road and we went jogging to the base to climb. We learned our first lesson of the trip... things appear much taller once you are on top! Here's a view of the hill from the car...
and here's a view of the car, part of the way up the hill... It was a great energy release from the morning of driving.
As we continued down highway 128, it went from barren arid geography (as seen above), to a beautiful canyon drive with camping, canoeing, and rafting! By far one of the most scenic drives of the trip and a very stark contrast from the previous day's romp through Kansas.
At the other end of the highway was Arches Nation Park, where we pulled in to find no entry fee!!! We stopped for a pit stop before continuing on to Delicate Arch for sunset. During the pit stop, I had to take a picture of my Explorer where it had never been before! We're ready for the rocks!
After a short drive through the park, we stopped at the trailhead of the 1.5 mile trail to the arch. It was quite crowded so I parked on the street with everyone else (which upon my return I discovered a parking citation and then noticed the no parking sign even with my bumper, no harm, no foul, now I know for next time!). One the way to the arch, there were plenty of other rock hills to climb, which basically became the theme for the day.
We continued down the seemingly forever trail. The path changed from basically a large rock hill to a ledge on a cliff... much like a trail going down into the Grand Canyon. We continued on the ledge for a bit, noting the crowd density increasing, and the we rounded the corner to see this!
If you look in the background, you can see people standing at the base of the arch to give you an idea of how large it is! Sunset was a perfect time to visit as the orange light highlighted the red rocks! Very beautiful and enjoyable hike. We have plenty more pictures, but this one seemed best.
As darkness came, we hiked back to the car and headed on down the road. We stopped in Provo, Utah for the night, just south of Salt Lake City to rest for our next day of adventures.
