Friday

I can hardly believe we've been here a week already.    We've been busy and not busy all at the same time.   Today we enjoyed meeting two "blog" friends Gay and Joe (good-times-rollin.blogspot.com) and their "tan clan".   Joe shared a very good and important tip with us at the dog park......They arrived this morning and will be here for a few months so we look forward to getting to know them all better.     MonaLiza and Steve (lowestravels.com) pulled in an hour or so later and it was so good to see them again.   We're all just a few spots away from each other.    It was partly cloudy most of the day, sometimes looking like the sky would open and sometimes the sun would peek out again.

We went into Moab to run a few errands and then took the long way home via Kane Creek Road.   It runs along beside the Colorado River, opposite the more heavily traveled Potash Road.

There were a number of people camping along the river in BLM campgrounds, but mostly tents and smaller trailers hauling loads of dirt bikes and all terrain vehicles.

We stopped a few times to look at some petroglyphs at the edge of the road, but mostly just enjoyed the view from the other side of the river.

Yesterday afternoon we drove into Arches National Park (just a few minutes away and free entry with our senior pass) with the intention of getting an overview and perhaps hiking or walking to a few of the closer arches.

entering Arches National Park

the Three Gossips

We pulled into the Windows section of the park and looked for a parking spot....we drove around the circle and drove around it again before finding a small spot just big enough to slip the jeep into.    Lots of people.   Is it still Spring break?

We decided to take the short walk to get up close to Double Arch.   So did at least 4 trillion other folks.   Sigh.

The scenery along on the way to the arch was intriguing.                                      

Dave approaches the arches

Can you find Dave looking up at the arch?

After seeing and hearing so many people at the Double Arch we decided to just auto hike around the rest of the park.    Its much quieter inside the jeep....

A few miles down the road I saw signs for the Delicate Arch trail and the Delicate Arch viewpoints so we turned in to see if we could view the arch without the crowds.

this tan rock ridge seemed to be gorging on the red sandstone in front of it

Once again the parking lot was full so we drove past it and on to the Delicate Arch viewpoint.   The lot there only had a few cars so we parked and hiked the mile trail out to a high point overlooking the famous arch.   We didn't have many people there with us but as we started back to the jeep we encountered waves of people on their way out to see what we'd just seen.   Perfect timing!

Delicate Arch as seen from the upper viewpoint

Balanced Rock
see the tiny people at its bottom right?

We'll visit again in the next weeks and hope that the crowds have gone home.   A girl can hope can't she?