The Arches of Utah

So 30 miles west of Grand Junction on I-70 is Utah. You'd think that with the olympics only 6 years ago, the sign would look newer, but maybe they like it that way. So what's there to do in Utah besides skiing? Well, offroading, and looking at cool geological things in national parks. So I'll save teh offroading for this summer, and start out by hitting Utah's most well known park (that happens to be the closest to me)....the Arches National Park.

I get into the park, grab a map, and drive off. Ignoring a number of scenic view points, cause I wanna see these arches. I mean this whole state is full of scenic views. But I do pull over for something that's not an arch. It's called Balanced Rock. And if you wanna see what a 3500 ton boulder standing on it's end 500 feet off the ground. Well, it's pretty cool.

And it's also pretty cool that you park right there (pretty much from where this picture was taken), and can walk right up to it, around it, hope it doesn't fall on you, whatever. So I'm diggin' this park. Bring on the arches. The first ones you come to, are the windows. And you have to notice the people standing in these pictures, just to get some perspective of their size. They're huge. And once again, you can see them from your car, walk right up to and around them. It's really neat.

So I'm totally into this right? Next up, the Delicate Arch. That's the biggest deal here. It's the one on the sign when you enter the state. It's on their license plates for cryin out loud. But I got my choice, park and hike a mile up to it (and a mile back, obviously), or park at the "viewing area". Well you know me, less walking the better. So I pick the viewing area, which has two viewing areas. And after mis-reading a map, I walk up a path of stairs, almost half a mile, climbing 200 ft of vertical to get to a spot that I look across a valley at the arch. And you know what, it's ok. Yeah, it's all delicate, and unbalanced looking, but it's not as ginormous as the others. Maybe next time I'll actually hike up to it, and be blown away, but until then, I'm not as impressed as the others.

So back to the car and I drive on. I get to the end of the road, and there's the area called Devil's Garden. My first thought, wow these rocks all look like something out of the Flintstones or something. So I gotta get out and see some more. There's a trail map, and at first says: "Total Trail Length = 7 miles". Hell no! But then I see it's labeled green, blue, and red (for difficulty). And I decide that today, I can do the green. And I do, but again, next time I'll come prepared to do some hiking and get to see the rest.

Well, the other purpose of this trip was to do some more cool driving. So one of my coworkers told me of a few roads to try, and let me tell you, I wasn't disappointed. On one road I did have to dodge about 1200 bicyclists, celebrating Moab's Skinny Tire Festival (FYI, Arches Park is right next to Moab). But it was a sweet twisty curvy road along cavern walls on my way to the park. Here's a cool shot of all the turns up ahead, and the cop just waiting for an idiot to floor it and take out a group of bikes.

And then on my way back, I took a different route. Around the La Sal mountain, zipping along in the middle of no where, down a 9% slope (which as a frame of reference, for those of you that have driven I-70 up to Summit County, like Breck, and Vail, those roads only get up to 5 & 6% slopes). Into 15 mph corners (taken at about 40 in the zoom-zoom) with no guard rails, and steep drops. Pretty freakin cool and fun to drive. And then as it flattens out into the valleys, I start seeing these signs that I don't understand. "Cattle Guard", hmmm, well, I figured out that those signs marked where a fence that holds in cows has to have a break in the fence as it crosses the road. How well does a fence work, if it has a break in it? And then the sign, "Open Range". Well, as you can guess after you cross a Cattle Guard, you're pretty much driving down a road with a cow pasture on either side of the road, and no fence. And I'll tell you what, as you cruise at the posted speed limit of 65 mph, a site like this kinda takes you by surprise.

And if you look real closely, there's an honest to goodness cowboy, rustlin up this cattle. He just tips his hat at me as I drive by, maybe cause he's friendly, or he could tell that I slowed down to like 20 mph and had a look of fear on my face, thinking I might need to get out and do some Crocodile Dundee mind trick to get one out of my way. And later in my drive, I did come across two more herds (I have a hard time calling less than 10 cows a herd, but I guess that's what they're called) and neither of them had anybody near them. And one cow was actually crossing the road in front of me. I'm too much of a city boy for this.