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Well, we are back!
Got back last night – over three hours later than scheduled, but at least we made it. Walked in the house, dumped clothes into the washing machine, finished two loads, put away clean clothes and suitcases, slept in our own beds and here we are!
M is already back at work – playing a memorial Mass at a local parish this morning.
I’m going to do a wrap up post on the trip later today, but I’ll fill up these takes with a report on what we did on Wednesday.
Previous posts:
Leprechaun and Blarney Caverns, Goblin Valley State Park
Devil’s Garden Trail in Arches National Park
The Fiery Furnace Trail in Arches National Park
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A bit of a gap in coverage here. Wednesday was a full day – about ten miles hiking all together – with a white-knuckle drive in the dark on Utah 6/89 through some mountains south of Provo, and by the time we got to our hotel in SLC, getting photos sorted and resized was about as much as I could do before crashing.
(An explanation of the resizing. I resize photos I upload to WordPress because if I didn’t, I would have long outstripped my included storage capacity, and blog posts would take a lot longer to load. Because of this, after blogging in this space for ten years, I’ve still only used about 2/3 of the storage space. I guess there are a lot of ways to resize, but I use this site.)
Tuesday night, we had driven to Monticello, Utah, to make our journey to the Needles section of Canyonlands a little less onerous – one hour versus the 90 minutes from Moab. Not to mention that Monticello hotel prices are at least half of what you generally pay in Moab. (More on where we stayed and what we ate in my ritual summary post.)
We had considered rising quite early – since it’s an hour to Canyonlands, we thought…maybe leave at 7?Start the hike by 8? Well…it was still dark at 7, so I let M sleep and we got back on the road by 8 – which was fine.
Encountered a new friend along the way.
(The first part of the drive is open range.)
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I will say – there is a chunk of the drive to the Needles section of Canyonlands that’s almost unbelievably stunning. You drive down among towering, walls of chiseled and tumbled rock, and it’s just gorgeous.
After some discussion Tuesday evening, we settled on the Chesler Park Viewpoint trail – it’s an out-and back through boulders, formations, a canyon and up to a great Needles spot – AllTrails says it’s 8.6 miles out and back, but the signage and park information says it’s 7.4. Judging from our time, I’d say the latter is correct.
I am normally not a fan of out-and-back hikes, being easily bored and much preferring a loop, but this was great. Given the variety of the landscape, hiking one way and then another actually gives different experiences, considering the different directions in which you are looking as you walk.
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A very good hike – some incline, but not enough to make me wish for a fainting couch. I can walk all day if the landscape is flat, but inclines have become a weak point – I have stairs in my house, so I suppose I have no excuse, as all I need to do is run up and down those a few dozen times a day to fix this issue.
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As we began the journey back north, we considered the time. After some discussion, we decided that yes, we could fill in the missing piece of our Arches experience – the Delicate Arch.
I’ll admit to you that both of us, after three good days exploring various parts of Arches, had developed a bit of a snobbish attitude about the Delicate Arch. Our hikes and viewing experiences had been so marvelous, we had concluded that basing the image of Arches on the Delicate Arch was a bit unfair to everything else. But hey…we had time….how can we not engage in this iconic experience?
It’s a 3-mile roundtrip hike, and we wondered why all the sites indicated it could take as long as three hours. Well, we found out!
I mean – we did it in two, but still – it’s not easy – it’s one of the more challenging “popular” hikes that I’ve done in a national park. What makes it difficult is not the distance, but the long, long section that’s an incline up an expanse of slickrock. The Delicate Arch is on a height (as are all the arches and popular formations in the park except for the Fiery Furnace), so of course you’re going to have to go up to get there. This was just….lengthy. And a little hard!
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But absolutely, totally worth it. The setting of the arch is really unlike any other in the park – all of the other arches are a part of larger formations, carved by nature out of rock that still surrounds the structure. But the Delicate Arch stands alone, with the gorgeous LaSal mountains and the other Arches formations in the background. Really, a set designer could hardly have done better.
What deepens the impact is first, the effort you’ve expended to arrive there – 1.5 miles of mostly uphill climbing – and then the initial approach – you have no view of the arch at all before, well, you see it. You’ve walked on a stone ledge around a large stone formation, you turn the corner – and there it is!
As I said, absolutely worth it – with the additional experience – which is always so moving to me – of experiencing it with others – it’s like seeing Old Faithful in Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon – being present with a crowd of others from all over the world, everyone just so pleased to be here, in this spot, in this country, right now.
It never fails to make me a bit verkemplt.
Well, now it’s time to move on! Quite a drive up to Salt Lake City, with that bit through the mountains, which was nerve-wracking not so much because of the driving in and of itself – winding mountain roads in the dark – but because everyone around me was completely used to the drive and was racing up, down and around me at great speeds.
But we made it! With a stop at an In-and-Out in Provo, and then on to our hotel for the night where I did not write this blog post.
So here you go.
More photos and videos at Instagram, both in posts and in “highlights.”
Taking back to family matters:
Movie Guy Son saw The Last Duel and wrote about it here,
He was interviewed on this podcast, mostly about John Carpenter’s movies, but also about his forthcoming novel…
The Sharp Kid, which you can take a peak at here….
All Saints is coming! Pick up a book!
For more Quick Takes, visit This Ain’t the Lyceum!
Charlotte was Both 