After a week with my two days of flu and a rainy holiday weekend, we finally found a nice day to take off.
Wednesday the 27th, we drove two and a half hours east to Arches National Park. Another beauty to behold!! We then drove and walked around in the park for three hours before heading back home. I did the drive home and that was good for me as I seldom get to drive. We did run into a couple patches of rain, but nothing that we could not navigate. But it was a long day!!
The scenery was awesome the whole trip, but not much else along the highway, except a John Wesley Powell Museum that we thought we would take in on our return trip. However, by then it was too late as we do not like driving after dark in unknown places. Will check it out another time.
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Mts. Tomasaki and Peale that I began watching and
taking pictures of more than fifty miles before
we reached Arches National Park. |
I take many of my pictures from the car also. This was our first pull-off for picture taking.
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Little fella watching a long way down.
I was amazed the mother was that trusting! |
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Gary talked with a correspondent from KSL
TV station from Salt Lake City. He was
telling that the park had to be closed down
Saturday and Sunday of Memorial weekend
because of the traffic snarl that it caused
out on the highway. |
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This looked like statues of early
settlers to me. |
Now on to our next pull-off --
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What awesome clouds for the day.
Can you tell we are at high elevation? |
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| Called Balanced Rock |
Can you see the climbers in the next two pictures? No easy way up there except with picks and rope!
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View of the high peaks again,
from within the park. They are on east of the park. |
Now we begin to see some of the arches! There were people walking clear back to them also.
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| North Window Arch |
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| South Window Arch |
Our next pull-off was to see Delicate Arch -- however, we never got clear back that mile climb.
First on the walk was this cabin and a root cellar from the John Wesley Wolfe Ranch. Actually it was in the valley very near the parking area.
It is not the first cabin that he built, but this one was built taller and has a wood floor.He migrated with his son, Fred, from Columbus, Ohio in the late 1800's because of his poor health caused by an injury to his leg. He sold the ranch in 1910 and it had several owners after that time.
Gary began his hike from this point.
You can just barely make out the trail zig-zaging on the hillside behind him. I watched him until he crossed over the hill. Because of knee problems he did opt to return with no sight of the Delicate Arch, as it is called. It is the arch that is most often pictured on tourist information and maps. Maybe because it is the most obscure.
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| Close-up of the people in the proceeding picture. |
Time to leave the park and head home. Highway here we come. We certainly enjoyed the beauty and the many, many kinds of rock formations. They have names for them all, but too many for this addled brain to remember.
Today is a lazy day again. Just doing pictures and the Blog before we went to the Richfield Senior Center for lunch. Sure enough food for $5. for both of us. Menu was Roast Beef Au Jus, macaroni salad, mandarin oranges and a cookie. The sandwiches were large enough that we cut them in half and took two extras of macaroni salad that they offered for our dinner this evening.
Sandy, you would have loved it. We think they might do meals on wheels, so were not sure what to expect. We will definitely do it again next week. We could have stayed for Bingo, but we left home with the computer and everything running since we were late. Next time we will plan better.
Not sure what we will do next for sight seeing, but the weekend is promising to be great weather.
They have had a lot of rain and storms north of us, about Salt Lake and on north. Last night there was even a tornado funnel, but it did not touch down. Also had hail the size of a half dollar. So we are not real anxious to move north yet. Soon though.
