Arches to Beaver

Friday, August 31, 2007

(Okay, it's taken me too long to continue. But here's the next installment of our southwestern adventure).

We got up early (did you know there was life before 7am???) to see Arches National Park by sunrise. We were a little late for the pre-sunrise beautiful light, but since it was cloudy the light was a little sporadic anyway. We saw the sunrise, and we saw the light on the rocks.

The rocks are AMAZING. Great red color, lots of geological stripes, and these great carved shapes caused by many years of water and wind.







I didn’t get any pictures you haven’t already seen a million times, so I’ll just show you this one, which I’m pretty sure you HAVEN’T seen a million times:



I guess, seen one arch, you’ve seen them all:



I did find a beetle, but this guy was cuter:



From Arches we drove westward to Capitol Reef.

And the wonderful clouds that often weren’t there in the morning but congregated during the day to become something like this:

And right on schedule:

At Capitol Reef we found more interesting rock formations:

And here we found petroglyphs:

Actually, we stopped at the turnout where the first petroglyphs were, and I couldn’t see them. So we came back after looking around the visitors center, and some other visitors very kindly pointed and pointed until I could finally see them. Sometimes I’m such a dummy…

Near the visitors center is an old house that’s been turned into a little shop and bakery. It’s run by Mormons, so the there are lots of handmade items inside, as well as very tempting foods. We bought two pies for later consumption.

Then we went into the park:

The wild photographer stalking his prey:

See those dark clouds behind the rock? Remember them…

We drove in to the end of the road and hiked in to see more petroglyphs:

You knew this was coming, right?

As we walked back to the little picnic area next to the parking lot, those clouds I showed you earlier opened up. They were turbo clouds – the rain just CRASHED down. Just a few yards to the picnic area and we were totally drenched. So was the path:

Okay, it doesn’t look like such a big deal, but really, this was after just a minute or so of rain.

Anyway, we sat under the awning and ate our pies.

The rain stopped, we finished our pie, and then headed back out of the canyon the same way we went in.

and continued on to Beaver, Utah.

All righty. Now you’ve followed us to Beaver, Utah. Stay tuned!!