A Quick Trip To Arches

We've been doing a lot of traveling this year. It's one of our favorite things to do as a family, and we're also making up for lost time. We've lived here for twelve years, and never seen the vast majority of the treasures this area has to offer. My oldest is already sixteen years old, so it won't be long before he moves out of the house and goes out on his own. We've got a pretty limited timeframe for showing him all those special places that we feel he should know.

However, there are practicalities that put limits on what we can do. My wife and I can only get so much time off, for one, and camping requires a lot of preparation work that we don't always have time to do. However, we are so close to all of this amazing stuff. I had an idea that would help us to see some things without dealing with any of those annoying practicalities. What about a day trip?

Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, and Great Basin are all national parks that we've never been to within a three hour drive from our house. We could leave early, arrive before noon, see all sorts of stuff, and be out by 5:00 PM in time to get home before bedtime. I talked my wife into giving it a try. We started today with Arches.

Three hours isn't a short drive, for certain, but it was a pretty drive too. When we got there, we stopped into the visitors center, and I got a patch to add to my collection.

We got maps and instructions, and headed out to see what we could see. It was already getting hot. In October, you never know what you're going to get, so we came prepared for anything we might expect. I was wearing those pants where you can zip off the bottoms and turn them into shorts, and upon leaving the visitor center I decided they needed to transform before we rolled out. My legs were getting hot. Everybody was already in the car and buckled, though, so I just unzipped them and left the bottom portions around my ankles.

My wife thought this was hilarious, and had to take several pictures for proof of my goofy fashion choice.

It wasn't really a fashion choice, I just didn't want to take off my shoes. I figured I'd do that when we stopped next. Which I did, when we stopped at what they call Park Avenue.

Park Avenue is a set of cliffs that have been carved out over the eons by wind and water to look like separate tall buildings. Hence the name.

Next thing down the road was Balanced Rock.

It's pretty cool how it looks different from every angle.

And it's definitely balanced. It looks like a stiff wind could knock it down.

The next spot was Double Arch, which is the arch depicted in my patch above.

What a beautiful spot. It was pretty amazing. Supposedly, at one time it was a big tunnel, but then the middle part collapsed, leaving the entrance and exit of the tunnel to form the two arches.

The kids' just loved to climb on the rocks as much as possible. Unfortunately, my wife has a strong fear of her children falling from great heights and dying. Everyone at double arch was climbing up to the rim of the inner arch to get pictures sitting in the arch's circle, so we decided to do one as well. The kids and I climbed up and my wife, who wasn't about to climb, thank you very much, took the picture. It's my favorite picture from the whole trip. What a cool picture.

Also, it was a very good thing that my wife didn't come up and join us. The arch was above a sheer cliff face that dropped fifteen to twenty feet. She would have freaked out. Even I was a little nervous having our little four year old scramble up the side of the rock and then perch on the edge of a cliff face just to get a picture. 

Well, we all survived, I guess. Apparently, one person falls to their death each year in Arches. Good to avoid joining that statistic.

Here's a shot of the arch from underneath.

Now we moved on to the next crazy rock formation.

I realized I hadn't taken a panoramic picture yet since being here, and this seemed like the perfect place, with tons of interesting formations, so there it is.

And yes, you're seeing that right. Here's a closer picture of the Stone Phallus of Doom! None can withstand its wrath!

Next, on the other side of the parking lot were the Window Arches as well as Turret Arch.

That's the North Window Arch.

And that's Turret Arch, taken from across the way where we were resting at the north window.

The next place we were going to see was the big one, the Delicate Arch, the symbol of Utah. I mean they put it on their license plate. New York puts the Statue of Liberty on their plate, Utah puts the Delicate Arch. When you go to visit New York, you don't leave without seeing the Statue of Liberty. Same goes for Utah. So, we had to see it.

But, we didn't want to do any long hikes. There's two ways to see Delicate Arch. You can go to the viewpoint, which you can access by way of a half-mile trail. The guide said you can see the arch, but you cannot get to it, because there is a canyon between you and it. Or, you can take the three mile hike that leads you right to the arch itself. You can walk right up to it, but it's a strenuous hike. The guide says to be sure to bring two liters of water per person on this hike.

Again, we didn't want to do any long hikes. Besides, the visitor center was going to close soon, and if Little Guy wanted his Junior Ranger badge, we had to get back there and turn in his booklet before it closed. So, we elected to go to the viewpoint instead of taking the hike. It should have been clear to me that we'd made the wrong choice when we pulled into the parking lot, and it was nearly empty. Everywhere else that we had gone it had been a struggle to find a spot to park. This time, it was wide open.

We parked, and stopped by the bathroom before heading out on the trail. I have to share the sign that I found there before moving on with the story.

What kind of monstrous things have happened in this bathroom so that they felt it necessary to include the instruction, "DO NOT use the floor. Use the toilet"? Seriously, what utter jerk wads are taking dumps on the floor in the national park's bathroom? Do they think they are funny? How often does such an atrocity occur? It makes me sad and frustrated to consider all the brainpower over the years that has been wasted trying to outmaneuver douchebags like this. It's the reason we have self flushing toilets, water faucets that only turn on when you wave your hands underneath them, paper towel dispensers that spit out one minuscule towel each time you wave your hand past it's sensor, and the reason why we haven't cured cancer, diabetes, bipolar disorder, or put men on mars yet. Grrr.

Back to the quest to see the Delicate Arch. If we'd taken the three mile hike, which we had plenty of time to do, and the weather wasn't to hot to do so either, our view would have looked something like this at the end of the trail:

I lifted that picture off the internet, because I didn't see that view. This is the view we got at the end of our trail:

My camera with the ability to zoom has been broken since it fell out of the car onto the pavement during our trip to Canada this summer. So, zooming in was not an option. I could only see it with the naked eye, and take a picture that looked even worse than the naked eye. In case you're wondering just where exactly Delicate Arch is in that picture, I made this version to help you:

 

Yeah, that's how we saw Utah's Statue of Liberty. I'm hoping to still return to Arches someday, and make that hike and enjoy the feel of the arch on my fingers when I touch it with my own hand. But for now, that's the best I'm going to get. For now, we had to hurry back to the visitor center to get Little his Junior Ranger badge. They gave him a bit of a hard time for not having watched a ranger program or even the movie at the visitor center theater, but seriously, this was a day trip, we wanted to see the actual park, not a movie about the park. So, that's what we spent our time with. He got his badge, and added it to his Junior Ranger hat.

Then we got in the car, and we all drove the three hours back home. I think the day trip thing was a success. Maybe we can try this thing again sometime soon. Canyonlands is right next to Arches, we could come back, re-see Delicate Arch from close up, then spend the rest of the day at Canyonlands. Sounds good, right? So say we all.