We slept a little longer today due to our late arrival last night and finally met our host Bob properly. He showed us around the house and explained to us the fossils he had collected in the mountains. He was a bit weird but very nice and friendly at the same time.
We continued our trip, unfortunately without properly seeing the Capitol Reef National Park. As our preferred destination was Arches National Park, we had to cut our visit to the other park short. We passed a smaller city called Hanksville where due to Bob there is a facility (NASA?) where scientists do experiments for a Mars landing. We didn't see any traces of it though.
We then got to the Arches National Park which is a great location, my favorite National Park so far. We drove to several view points where we took shorter hikes. The first trail led us through a smaller canyon where we had an amazing view of the red rocks. It was unbelievably hot again though so after that I felt a bit like collapsing from the heat again and needed a break in the car and a lot of water. Luckily that helped quickly and I was able to further explore the park.
Another trail led us around the Balancing Rock, where there indeed was a big round shaped rock balancing on top of another. Due to wind and rain over thousands of years the softer materials of the rocks gets washed out and leaves the harder parts in quite interesting structures. That's also why there are so many arches in the park, they have been ctreated over the years and also unfortunately sometimes collapse as the process never stops. In the 1991 a part of the famous Landscape Arch had collapsed (a park visitor was lucky enough to capture the moment with his camera) and since then the trail underneath it is closed to the public. Thankfully the people resting underneath the arch had heard a loud cracking noise and managed to flee before the rocks came down.
Another trail led us around the Balancing Rock, where there indeed was a big round shaped rock balancing on top of another. Due to wind and rain over thousands of years the softer materials of the rocks gets washed out and leaves the harder parts in quite interesting structures. That's also why there are so many arches in the park, they have been ctreated over the years and also unfortunately sometimes collapse as the process never stops. In the 1991 a part of the famous Landscape Arch had collapsed (a park visitor was lucky enough to capture the moment with his camera) and since then the trail underneath it is closed to the public. Thankfully the people resting underneath the arch had heard a loud cracking noise and managed to flee before the rocks came down.
We also visited the Window Arch that's not in danger of collapsing and were allowed to walk under it. It was huge, quite impressive! Our last stop in the park was the Landscape Arch. We took the trail up to it even though another thunderstorm was coming. We made it to the Arch and took pictures but then I turned around and almost jogged back to the car as it had started to rain. That was a good decision as the rain had gotten harder and you never know how a thunderstorm develops in the mountains. The park rangers were already waiting at the parking lot telling people to leave.
In the end it wasn't too bad and we even saw a beautiful rainbow before we left the park. We then drove to Moab where we had dinner at an Italian restaurant and then reached our place for the night.
View from the bed
The house in the middle of nowhere where we stayed
More fotos to come!
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