Arches Arches Arches

In an attempt to catch up on blogs, here I am (I feel like this is all I ever do- get behind then have a burst of blog posts in a short period).

The week following the weekend of Sedona, Bear Mountain was spent wrapping up research and preparing my talk and presentation. I was enrolled in two classes while at NAU, one was based off research where we were required to write a 5-10 page report over what we had done over the summer. The other was based off the seminars we had twice a week. For that class we had to present our research at the end of the summer to those in charge of the program as well as anyone else who wished to attend. More about how those two things went later!

That week for our Dancing on the Square, we learned the hustle! It was a lot of fun! We got a bit rained out during the night, so Teresa and Eric (whom we managed to convince to come) and I went for some fried okra, chicken wings and apple pie at a nearby restaurant. Good stuff.

Ok, so on the weekend of July 30-August 1st, we ventured back to Utah! This time our destinations were Arches National Park, Mt. Peale, and Monument Valley. To start off our journey, we planned on leaving Flag at about 3-4pm Friday afternoon. Of course, road trips never really start on time. Friday it rained REALLY hard in Flagstaff. Like, two inches in 20 minutes hard. Up at Lowell, one of the building's basements was flooding, and on the first floor water was squirting up through the cracks of tiles. It was pretty intense. There's been a lot of uncharacteristic rain lately in Flagstaff (I blame global warming). This is bad news for people living north of town, because of flooding. After the Schultz fire, there's been a lot of flash flooding and it's been a real mess. Anyways, the main road through town, Milton, was completely flooded and impassable- right near the bottom of Mars Hill (where Lowell is located). We were pretty much stuck at Lowell until 5:30 or 6. Traffic was incredibly awful, and no one could get anywhere. Our ride coming to get us took 45 minutes, when it normally takes 5.

Yikes! Okay, so after packing hurriedly and shoving all of our stuff into Eric's car, Eric, Nicole and myself took off for Utah. We were the only ones on the trip because 2 people were going out of town, and the other two had a lot to do with their projects (presentations and papers were due the following Monday). We ended up leaving town at about 6:45... It takes about 6 hours to get to Moab, UT where Arches is!

A pretty rainy sunset leaving town.

The trip wasn't bad at all! We listened to a lot of good music, and saw some amazingly superb lightning for the majority of the ride actually. I wish we could have seen the ride in the light to see the landscape, but occasionally the lightning would light up structures in the distance. It was fun to imagine what they were, but would have been more fun to actually see them.

Nicole fell asleep with my cat, Gwynavere. :)

We ended up getting to our BLM (Bureau of Land Management) campsite at about 12am I think. There were lots of public, first come-first serve campsites around the park. We set up camp right next to the Colorado River and fell asleep to the sounds of water and bugs and to the sight of a nice clear sky.

The next morning we ate a breakfast of bagels (a baker's dozen for the trip!) and coffee. Then we drove over to the actual entrance to the park.

My first photo of the area! On our way to the park entrance.

There were an endless number of cool things to see in the park, so get ready for an explosion of photos. I'll try and restrain myself as much as possible!

We took just about every scenic view stop we saw. The first was just inside the park and had a nice view of the La Sal mountain range. It is named La Sal ('salt' in spanish) because when first discovered in the middle of a desert region, people couldn't believe it was snow on the peaks. Of course it makes sense that instead it is actually salt...?

The La Sal mountain range

The Three Gossips

The Organ. I have a hard time seeing it...

Balanced Rock! Name is self-explanatory I hope.

The Fiery Furnace.

That last photo is of the Fiery Furnace- a really cool place to hike, but you have to buy permits and it's incredibly easy to lost without a guide. Maybe next time! Our hike was the Devil's Garden primitive trail loop. About ~7 miles round trip. It was hike with the most amount of arches to see, so why not? First on the trail was Landscape Arch.

Landscape Arch

It was really cool! Back in the 90's some huge chunks fell off and since then they have deemed it too dangerous to walk under, so you can only get as close as this photo was taken. Next was Partition Arch.

Me standing under Partition Arch!

We had a lunch of, you guessed it, bagels under Partition Arch. Not a bad view at all! We stopped briefly at Navajo Arch next.

Nicole and Eric under Navajo Arch.

We went on to Double-O Arch. It was pretty neat!

Double-O Arch.

Next to the Dark Angel. It only looks like an angel from about this distance.

The bizarre landscape at the park.

We were starting to run out of water on the way back so we were quiet and didn't really take any more photos. We were pretty happy to finally get back. After getting hydrated and taking off our pretty smelly shoes we headed to Moab for some info and ice cream. While hiking in the park, we had seen rain in the distance and wondered if it was still possible for us to hike Mt. Peale, let alone get up to the trailhead. After stopping by the information center, the outcome seemed pretty bleak. The road to the trail was unpaved and after flooding in the area would be impossible to traverse in Eric's Malibu... We decided to wait until the next morning to make the final decision about climbing a mountain. Mt. Peale is the highest peak in the La Sal range at 12,726 feet.

In the meantime, we got some ice cream and espresso at a local shop, then drove to our new campsite at the foot of the mountains, near some lake. It was pretty nice because there wasn't hardly anyone there (bad weather has its advantages!). We washed off in a creek (so classy) and made a dinner of quinoa (leftover from the Zion/Bryce trip...) and veggies. We slept outside on our sleeping bags for a bit, but it started raining in the night, so into the tent we went. It continued raining through the night and stopped sometime in the morning Sunday. Definitely not climbing any mountains. Not only would it be pretty stupid and dangerous, but there's no way we could've driven to any trails.

After coffee, breakfast, and packing up camp, we went back to the park and took a short hike around the North and South Windows (also known as the 'Spectacles'), Turret Arch, and finally went to Double Arch. These were all short, 1 mile or less hikes so it was more crowded than I liked, but oh well.

North and South Windows aka The Spectacles.

Under an arch- maybe Turret?

Double Arch- it was really big and awesome to climb under/around.

Finally, it was time to head back to Arizona. The drive back was fine and dandy. We drove through Monument Valley, which was on the border of Arizona. It was incredibly weird but also cool.

Looks like somebody tilted the land...

Some of Monument Valley.

I drove us back home (so nice to drive for the first time that summer!), and we arrived home about 8pm I think. (We also tried stopping at a dinosaur museum and a coffee shop but both were closed for Sunday).

Woo! An action-packed weekend. I'm a little bummed we didn't get to climb a mountain (sometimes you just want to climb a mountain, you know?), but I had a ton of fun at Arches. It was a unique experience I'll never get again, and the landscape in Utah is incredible!