Day 11: Arches National Park

Wednesday June 22

Balanced Rock

The weather forecast is for a high of 96 and we thought it was hot yesterday with mid 80’s.  We pack a picnic lunch and lots of extra water.  We enter Arches National Park and stop at the Visitor’s Center and get maps and a general idea of where to go from a park ranger.  We have found that works well and they highlight the park for us.  We start our ascent into Arches NP and I am surprised that Scott is still driving but he seems fine with it.  We come to several small points along the way; the organ, courthouse towers, sheep rock, and Tower of Babel and find them spectacular.  Our first big stop  is  Balanced Rock.  We hike right up to the rock and it’s incredibly huge.  Hard to believe weather and erosion will someday destroy this beautiful feature.  It is basically a ball of rock sitting on top a  rock cylinder.  We can see the Windows section of the park from here, where there are big circles cut out of the rock. 

Double Arch

We drive into the Windows section and hike into the Double Arch.  This is absolutely breathtaking with 2 arches right next to each other.  We walk into the arch and sit in the shade for awhile.  It is becoming more hot as the day progresses and not much chance to get out of the sun.  We have lunch here in the truck with the AC running.  We drive on to Delicate Arch, one of the more famous arches in the park.  This is such a delicate piece since it has such a narrow piece holding up the arch.  We walk to the look out point and see the arch.  Just down the road is Wolfe Ranch where John Wesley Wolfe settled the area in the late 1800s.  It is composed of 2 old ranch buildings- a root cellar  partially buried in the ground.  The newer building is from 1906.  There is a small corral for cattle along the small creek of water.  Hard to believe that people could live here in the middle of the dessert canyon with so little water, no electricity and no communications. 

I am excited to see the petroglyphs here at Wolfe Ranch.  I had bought a postcard showing the petroglyphs in hopes that we can see them.  It is basically art pecked into the rocks.  This group of art work is dated after the 1700 because of the reference made to horses which were introduced by the Spaniards around 1700.  It is believed these petroglyphs were written by the Ute Indians.  The most spectacular panel of art  is showing sheep and men riding horses.  It is so cool to see such a part of our history.

We drive to the rest of the park, passing Skyline Arch in the caves to the right.  We stop and refill water bottles at Devils’ Garden Trailhead.  We have gone through 8 water bottles and thankfully Scott is keeping a 5 gallon jug of water in the truck just for times like this.  We reapply sunscreen and take off to  find more arches.  We don’t walk far enough to see Landscape Arch but do see Tunnel Arch.  The girls have had it at this point and are ready to be done hiking and the heat.  We head back down to the visitor’s center for the one and only bathroom trip of the day. 

From here we head to Potash Road to check out some more petroglyphs and find some dinosaur tracks.  We easily spot the first set of petroglyphs along the side of a rock cliff following the road.  There are a ton of doll cutouts and other animals.  We drive to the next viewing area but can not find the bear in the rock.  Another mile leads us to the dinosaur tracks.  In a stone set on the side of the cliff are three toed Allosaurus dinosaur tracks.  I am amazed that they are as small as they are but we are viewing history regardless.  There is more Indian Art here as well.  We continue on to find the last of the petroglyphs next to an arch.  It took us awhile to find Jug Handle Arch but we finally do (after driving down a very rough dirt road for a few miles).  The area is posted as a bighorn sheep lambing area but unfortunately we do not see any sheep.  The Jug Handle Arch looks just like the handle to a gallon of milk.

It is still about 95 degrees when we arrive back at the campground for dinner around 7pm.  Driving through Moab we notice how quiet the streets are.  What few people are there tend to be older.  We expect most people are still out exploring and will come into town later when the sun sets, around 8:45pm.  We drove through town the night before about 9pm and it was a very busy place at that time of day.