04/28/01:
Arches National Park is 5 miles north of Moab on US 191 and 65 miles north of the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park. The entrance sits off the side of the road down a hill and if you're not paying attention you might miss it. The park is mostly an 18 mile drive through spectacular sandstone formations ending at the campground and most of the trails.
The first trail I came to was Park Avenue, so named because the rock formations look like sky scrapers, court houses and other buildings with nothing else around them. Once down 2-3 dozen, steps this is an easy mile long trail along a sandstone (what else) creek bed with great views the entire way. The ol' bod wasn't too thrilled with climbing back up those steps after several days in the hospital and I took my time and then rested 15-20 minutes back in the car.
Balanced rock is a round rock of sandstone sitting a couple hundred feet in the air on top of a pinnacle. I drove up to the Windows, a couple of arches near each other, but didn't feel up to doing the mile long loop. I'll do those tomorrow and continue on to the campgrounds and trails there.
04/29/01:
After filling up the gas tank in Moab I was back in Arches National Park shortly after 8am. I sped along the access road until I realized all the cool scenery from yesterday was still cool today. Having seen it before made no difference. It's awful hard to describe the beauty of this area. To say there are huge, red, sandstone spires, pinnacles, arches, etc. just doesn't do it.
I headed back to the Windows area again. This is a pair of arches in a wall a couple of hundred yards long and a couple hundred feet high. The Turret Arch is part of the mile long loop trail. I almost missed the best arches of the bunch. Double Arches and Cove of Caves is near the parking lot just beyond the Windows parking lot.
Next I stopped off at the Wolf Ranch (from the 1800's) and the Delicate Arch Trail. The sign said this three mile trail was rated moderately strenuous. At this point I thought that was a little too difficult and a little to long for me so I passed. A little further on a 1.2 mile round trip led to Broken (not really) Arch and a .4 mile round trip sloughing through red sand brought me to Sand Dune Arch (also kinda broken).
The road ends at Devil's Garden Campground and Trailhead. Several trails and some 10 arches lead off from here. I thought I'd had enough for the day and called it quits.