Once again, I am exhausted!
So, we woke up this morning to the sound of my mom's phone alarm that is nature sounds and piano music. It was much more peaceful than the annoying alarm yesterday. We went downstairs for breakfast, to find that a tour group had descended upon the breakfast area and took all of the blueberry muffins. Abby and I decided on some cereal and apple juice that once again tasted like cranberries. We then grabbed our stuff and hopped in the car on our way to Arches National Park.
There's really no other way to put it: the park rocked. We drove the winding path up to the hiking trail that would lead to Delicate Arch. Once we started the trail, it seemed like a walk in the national park. However, we didn't see the giant hill coming up. The hill was extremely steep! We slowly paraded up the hill and finally arrived at the top. Surprisingly, I made it first. After the hill, we had to walk along an open cliff face all the way up to the arch. The arch itself was bigger than I expected. It was absolutely worthy of being the symbol of the American Southwest. We admired the arch and took some pictures before heading back down to the parking lot. It turns out that it is even harder to go down steep hills than up. We struggled down and then headed over to see some cave art, which was quite interesting. There were pictures of what appeared to be men riding horses hunting some sort of animal. Next we got back in the car, had snack, and went off to the viewing area. We looked at the arch from afar before going to the Fiery Furnace. The Fiery Furnace was just beautiful. The red rock shone in a maze-like form that would be difficult to hike through. After the Fiery Furnace, we went to the Double Arch, Windows, and Turret Arch. I didn't get any pictures there, but they were all totally amazing. We ate lunch near the Garden of Eden and decided between two paths. We could either walk down to park avenue, or we could go to the Sand Dune Arch/Broken Arch. We decided to go to the Sand Dune/Broken Arches because we had already seen park avenue the night before. The sand dune arch was beautifully but inconveniently placed in the sand. We had to dump it out of our shoes once we got back. The broken arch was in the middle of a field and a long boring hike, but it was worth it. By the time we finished, we were all exhausted and we headed back home after a brief visit to the gift shop.
The entrance to the Arches National Park
The view from the parking lot to the Delicate Arch Trail
The view from the trail
From the face of the cliff
Delicate Arch. Sorry about the people in the picture, but you can use them for size reference.
A Mexican Hackberry bush
Fiery Furnace
Once we got back, we all rotated through the showers and decided to go out shopping. In the same store, I got some wooden flower earrings and Abby got a pocketknife. We then went to Zax Pizza, where my Mom, Dad, and I shared a meat lover's pizza and my sister had some very cheesy mac-n-cheese. Next we went to a bridge over the Colorado and walked across. I noted the locks that were secured on the bridge, one of which said "B+K Promise." This comes from a French tradition where when you get married, you lock a lock on a bridge or something similar and throw the key into a body of water. Very interesting, I thought. Finally we ended up back at the hotel where we watched the USA Ghana game reruns and ate chocolate covered pomegranate seeds. Tomorrow we're repelling!
-Sarah Jackson
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