UTAH
Arches National Park - Day 3
Since today was our last day and we hiked 10 miles yesterday, we wanted to keep today light. We had plenty of sleep, so we packed up, had breakfast and checked out of the cabin around 9:30 AM.
We went back into the park and aimed to hit all the pullouts and overlooks we had skipped the previous days. By the way, if you don’t have the National Parks Pass it is a must! Particularly because there is limited camping inside the park itself.
Balanced Rock for instance, is quite cool and the walk around the base of it is only a few hundred feet.
Next is the offshoot to see the Window Arches. These involve a bit of a walk, but no more than a single mile. I have a cooler photo from my DSLR that I will have to upload when I get home where the two windows together look like a huge dragon snout! This picture is just one of the windows.
There is also Turret Arch here but I don’t have a phone picture.
There is also another double arch here that is really cool! You can climb underneath the arches and look up. This requires some minor rock climbing so watch your step and wear good shoes!
A father and his son were climbing into this arch the same time as us so Courtney was helping them find hand holds on the way up and the way down.
Finally we headed down to Fiery Furnace overlook. I think the actual Fiery Furnace hike is closed either for COVID or for winter, or for both. You need to get a reservation and it is apparently in high demand. It sounds pretty dang cool but we also had some really nice views from the overlook (which I also failed to take any with my phone… stay tuned for those)
For February we feel pretty good about nearly full completion of Arches National Park. There is also an offroading trail out to Eye of the Whale or to Klondike Bluffs but we weren’t set up for any kind of rough terrain this trip. Maybe next time!
We headed back to Salt Lake City and stopped in Price, Utah for lunch at Los 2 Amigos. This place also wasn’t that impressive but hey, it was food.