A "Monumental" Day. :)

• We started our day with a delicious breakfast at Love Muffin right next to our hotel, then we headed North out of Moab to Arches National Park, where erosion of the sandstone has created more than 2,500 natural stone arches in a 116 square mile area. We drove the main scenic road through the park, stopping briefly to hike around Balanced Rock and take a silly yoga photo. :)

Look at me holding up a several ton boulder. :)

 

Balanced Rock.

 

The scenic road through Arches National Park.

We drove a little farther in and hiked the short distance to the Windows arches and Turret Arch.

North Window.

 

Lots of people resting in the shade of the North Window.

Me inside Turret Arch. :)

North Window and South Window.

The next short hike was to Double Arch, where a "pothole" formation in the sandstone created two arches that are connected on one end. We crawled up high under the arch and relaxed in the shade for a bit.

Double Arch.

 

View from our shady spot under the Double Arch.

 

Me inside one of the double arches.

After Double Arch, we drove farther into the park in hopes of seeing the Delicate Arch, the most famous of the arches. We could have hiked the fairly strenuous 3 mile round trip to see it, but we were still pretty tired after the Angel's Landing hike yesterday, plus it was getting REALLY hot and we didn't have any water in the car. We decided to go the easy route and drive to the lower, handicap accessible view of the arch, but we discovered that the road to it was closed, so we didn't get to see Delicate Arch. We'll have to save that for next time! :)

We left Arches National Park and headed to the nearby Canyonlands National Park. We drove to the far end of the Island in the Sky portion of the park and hiked the 2 mile round trip Grand View Point Trail, aptly named. The trail followed the rim of the canyon for about a mile, ending in a sweeping view of the canyon.

Canyonlands National Park.

 

View from along the Grand View Point trail.

The end of Grand View Point trail.

After Canyonlands, we headed south again to Monument Valley (this makes the THIRD national park or monument we visited today! :) ) We arrived just before sunset, and the monuments were a gorgeous red color in the fading light.

Our first view of Monument Valley, still far in the distance.

Now a little closer...

 

Beautiful color in the sunset.

We didn't actually enter the Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park to do the 16 mile scenic drive through the monuments as we had planned, but we still got nice views of the monuments from the highway, with a few scenic stopping points along the way. We still had over 3 hours to drive to Cortez, where we would spend the night to be close to our next stop, Mesa Verde. After a very dark drive with hardly any towns or even street lamps, we arrived at the Super 8 in Cortez and crashed into bed, and thus we ended our "monumental" day. :)

 

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