We dismounted the camper for the couple days while we’re here. There’s a power hook up so we can turn the air conditioner on and leave the pups here. Remember that the national parks are not pet friendly, so there’s really no allowing them off of pavement or concrete, and at 95 to 100° here that gets too hot for the dogs. The campground is nice and shaded, though, and they sleep most of the day anyway.
Kathy and I went to Canyonlands first thing in the morning. This is one of my favorite parks, if not my favorite park. It’s not necessarily from the Mesa where the tourists drive, but it’s because of the White Rim Trail that traverse is down to where the Colorado and the Green rivers nearly converge. That is one of the best camping/overlanding routes. I’ve done it three times, and although we’re not taking Howie down there, it still is a wonderful place to visit. This is actually the first time that I made it up onto the Mesa and drove all the roads and looked at all the vistas.
The way national parks are now you have to have a reservation order to drive in, and Arches National Park is no different. I got on the website when we arrived here and the only times that were available were afternoon times on any of the three days that were here. So I paid the two dollars reserved at 3 PM slot for today. You can enter the park before 7 AM, or after 6 PM without an You can enter the park before 7 AM, or after 6 PM without a reservation, beginning, moving out early in the morning is its own feat. After coming back from Canyonlands, we had a nice nap, some lunch, and then headed up to Arches.
Arches National Park is one of those kind of surreal places with a very dynamic landscape. It’s a great place for hiking, especially if you’re here in the spring or fall or if you’re out early in the morning. It’s also a great place for stargazing and night hikes. While we were there at 3:30 in the afternoon, and it was about 95°, we did a little hiking, but mainly spent the time driving. There are a couple of roads in Arches National Park that require four-wheel-drive and display some additional places in the park. We took one of those roads, turned at the “beware four-wheel-drive road”, and proceeded up a fairly technical, 4/10 type of trail. Now I’m not in my FJ cruiser, but rather this 3500 Ram 1-ton truck, so I’m still getting used to four wheeling this thing. It did exceptionally well. They’re only a couple of spots that I had to get out and look for a line, and I only scraped the tail pipe once. I did have to remove the camper tie-downs because they stuck out just a little too far.
Overall the drive took us to Whales eye arch as well as near tower arch, where we saw the marching men. It was about a 2 1/2 hour side trip, but we did get a little hiking and had some fun.
Here is a photo album for today.
