Canyons and Arches

We're now on the eastern part of Utah and today we worked our way north a bit towards I-70. Tonight we're camping in Moab and therefore had the privilege of exploring both Canyonlands National Park and Arches National Park.

We went to Canyonlands first which is a huge park that would require several days to see it all. Since we only had a few hours we stuck to the part known as Island in the Sky. While there we stopped at a few viewpoints overlooking the canyons and we also hiked to Mesa Arch which was a pretty cool arch right on the edge of the cliff so you could see the valley below by looking through. We also drove down to the Grand View Point Overlook which was pretty cool. And we drove up to the Upheaval Dome and planned to do the hike there but there were so many people and no parking that we ended up just leaving instead. 

We skipped Dead Horse Point Overlook mostly because it didn't accept our annual pass since it's a State park instead of National, but we also had so much to see today that it didn't make sense to squeeze it in.

After a quick lunch we went to Arches National Park which was pretty impressive. It contains the world's largest concentration of natural sandstone arches. We first went to drive down the Windows Section and admired those from the truck. Then we drove up to the Delicate Arch, where we initially accidentally started doing the longer hike to the arch instead of the normal one we intended. It was incredibly hot and we hadn't brought any water with us since we thought we were doing a short hike, so after a ways we turned back around. We did go by a rock art panel which was pretty cool. Then we drove up to the Delicate Arch viewpoint and did the shorter hike. The Delicate Arch was really cool (and famous for a reason) and one that I think it'd be worthwhile getting closer to, so I'd recommend that longer hike if the weather is right and you have time. 

Our last stop there was driving up to the Devils Garden Trailhead and hiking to Landscape Arch, which is North America's longest arch (and second longest in the world, I believe). It took us less than an hour of relatively easy hiking and the arch was incredible. Unfortunately the sun was at the wrong angle for good pictures (early morning would be good) but I tried my best. 

That's it for today!