We made an early start on Sunday morning and headed off to Arches National Park. Again, the change of scenery throughout the journey was amazing. We stopped off for breakfast on the road and thoroughly enjoyed our view there, looking out over an area that was fairly flat with occasional rock structures sticking out of nowhere. We stopped later on for coffee at a rest area on the Interstate and as we were leaving Seamus noticed a Pronghorn right on the top of a little hill. We managed to get a shot of it and Linda’s comment when she saw the photograph had us both in stitches. Oh she remarked how lovely to have one with the antlers profiled – I think it is pregnant as its belly looks huge!! Then the absurdity of what she had said sunk in. We arrived at Arches National Park just before midday and it was heaving. When we entered the park there was a sign that said “Campground Full” and so we pressed on to the Visitor’s Centre to see what our options were – this was becoming a habit! The ranger told us that there were sites along the Colorado River that were on a first come first served basis. Linda suggested that we should go and find our site before they all filled up. Sure enough the first site was full but thankfully when we arrived at the second site we managed to secure the last but one site. It was a Bureau of Land Management site on the river and was a lovely spot – it was just $12 per night and had restrooms and a dumpster. We really could have done with a dump station to rid ourselves of our wastewater but decided that we could manage if we were careful. We then planned our stay – we decided to spend the rest of the day on site and hike one of the trails that led off across the road from us. Unfortunately for us we chose the hikers and bikers trail and it was very busy with serious mountain bikers, some of which had been on the trail for four days, having cycled about 40 miles a day across the mountains – mental, sometimes the track was just six inches wide with drop offs of probably 100ft to the side and most of them were adorned with huge cuts and bruises despite all the proper gear!! We, of course, would have loved to have joined them but our bikes came from Walmart and would not have lasted the first chicane of rocks – what a shame! We photographed some lovely cacti that were in full bloom and looked spectacular in the desert terrain.

We were up very early on Monday morning and headed for the park. We drove the length of the park (around 18 miles) and the scenery was incredible. There were of course lots of arches but also there were some amazing rock formations as well as unbelievably balanced rocks. We had breakfast by the campsite and then decided to hike the Landscape Arch Trail. We went so far and then decided to head back and get a jacket as it was blowing a hoolie and was quite cool. I think that we actually wore them for about 10 minutes in the end because it warmed up very quickly! The Landscape Arch was a structure of rock, just six feet thick at its narrowest point and it spanned over 300ft which is longer than a football pitch! In 1991 some unsuspecting tourists witnessed a rock fall from the arch for no apparent reason and so one wonders how long it will be before the arch collapses altogether. On our way back along the road we stopped off at all the viewpoints to see, for example Delicate Arch which is an archway on the side of a hill with no other rock structure around it and Park Avenue which is an avenue amongst rocks, some of which look like thin fins stuck on the top of rocks. We had a full day and were out for over twelve hours.