Arches 6/20/09

We spent the night in Buckoard campground near Monicello Utah. Poor van...the drive up the mountain was hard and it had to resort to first gear a time or two. It left me feeling spooked about the coming drive back down.

We fell in love with the campground and if not for a group that had set up camp nearby we would have been nearly alone. Wildflowers were everywhere and our loop was in a stand of Aspen. A small creek wandered through the campground as well as evening deer. We enjoyed the location enough to stay for another night so we unhitched the van, left the trailer behind and set off for Arches National Park.

We took some advice that had been given to us by our camp host during breakfast regarding our route to Moab and went down what we considered the back of the mountain. After driving the route we decided it would be the way to come down the mountain when the time came to hitch up and leave the next day. We passed more flowers and a couple of alpine ponds. The surprise was the round up. Real cowboys...cool. This as open range territory.

On our way through Moab we passed a place called The Rock Shop. Kat often pulls rocks from Trey's pockets that he finds interesting when washing his cloths. They make their way to a collection he has in his "museum closet". We stopped. Outside were many fine rocks but inside Trey's eyes were nearly lost to the floor...cartoon style. Many of the rocks had been polished to bring out hidden beauty. There were geodes and fossilized wood. Others held fossils of delicate flowers or trilobites. One was a dinosaur femur. Trey was in heaven. We left without buying. Much of the stuff was local and I felt that with a little trying we might be able to find some ourselves.

Arches National Park is close to Moab, a medium sized town, and also near an interstate. With that in mind you should feel free to imagine it as a busy park. It was. At least we got in for free, or at least it felt free with the National Park Pass. I'm becoming a shill for that pass. Sigh.

The weather was a cool 80 degrees and overcast. Normal temps are around 100. It seemed the family was to be weather lucky again. We were disappointed with the lack of sunlight, though, which we knew would take away from the color in the formations. The gain was comfort.

Our plan was to ride to the the end of the park. There is one way in, one way out, and they are one in the same. Once there we had hoped to use a nearby picnic area. The picnic area as full, though, so we continued on to Devil's Garden. We ate in the van.

Many of the sights in the park require long hikes, but plenty of them are close to the road and require little or no hiking. Considering the children and my healing foot we decided to stick with small hikes only. We took our longest hike shortly after lunch to landscape Arch which looks to be in the last stages of its' "life". I was limping by the time we got back to the van but Landscape was a must see for me. Kat's must see was Delicate arch. Fortunately for her and us the clouds had cleared by the time we got to it. This was an excellent picture day for Elise. She liked the fossilized sand dunes.


We left before sunset for Moab and made it to a laundromat we had noted on the way to the park. Dirty clothes were taking the camper over in a trible kind of way. A remedy was needed. While Kat washed I went to an auto part store in search of an O2 sensor that had failed while we were still in Charlotte. The price was too high so I passed but while I was in line there were some kids ahead of me attempting to match a new u-joint to their grossly abused example. They had been 4-wheeling in their Jeep Cherokee. Sigh....stupid kids. Of course, secretly I wished it was my u-joint. My youth. Five loads of washed clothes later were were on our way home to buckboard, a rainy sunset to our right.