Month: October 2024

We went online on Thursday night and were able to secure an entry ticket into Arches National Park for 9 am. on Friday. Previous tickets, I had only been able to get a pass beginning at 2 pm. However they release additional entry tickets at 7 pm the night before, so I watched the time and made sure I was logged in to get one.

We had a bit of cloud on Friday morning, but by the time we got to the park we had full sun. The entrance was fairly smooth – show our day pass and park entrance pass along with ID and away we went. We stopped at a couple of viewpoints but then made the decision to drive out the windows and double arch road for some hiking.

Double arch was first on the list. A double arch is formed from potholes in the sandstone. A pothole that forms above an alcove in the face of the rock eventually wears through, forming an arch. In the case of the double arch, the same thing happened on the back side of the cliff, resulting in a double arch.

I stopped at the end of the trail but Paul kept going and joined all the others who were climbing right under the arch to look out the other side.

After returning to the start of the trail, Paul went to the other side of the parking lot to hike the windows trail. I opted to save my energy to hike to view the Delicate Arch which had some definite elevation change.

Once Paul returned, we headed down the road until we reached the trail to view the Delicate Arch. There is a trail to take you right to the arch, but it is a 5 km round trip with about 500’ elevation gain. At our stop there were two viewpoints. The first was a very short walk and then if you carried on from there, it was a 1.6 km round trip to the upper loop. There was an elevation gain of 170’ and the stats told us some of the incline was as much as 41% and 45% of the trail had inclines of 8% or greater.

We did have a nice view of the arch once we were up.

Much of the incline was hard packed, but with loose sand from everyone walking it. Coming down was just as slow as going up!

In addition to the arches, we also went through areas of valleys with lots of sagebrush.

We drove to the end of the road in the park and then headed back to the visitor centre to watch the video of the park before we headed to the trailer. Tomorrow the plan is drive the La Sal Loop.

After taking a day off on Tuesday, we were back in the truck again on Wednesday for another drive. Paul was game for another cliff-hugging, switchback mountain road but I had had enough of that for a while. With a quick stop at the National Forest and Bureau of Land Management offices to get some alternatives, we started on Harts Draw Road west of Monticello. Once again, we had some smoke on the horizon from the forest fires.

We came out of Harts Draw into Canyonlands at Newspaper Rock, but headed back to the highway to go north to a road into the Needles Overlook. It was also paved and we had more beautiful views of the canyons and red rocks.

In stark contrast, as we drove along the mesa top, all you could see was sagebrush as far as you could see!

After we finished our drive and came back out to Hwy 191, we made the decision to drive north to Moab to check out our camping options for the next four days. I had a gap in our reservations and had a couple of options I wanted to check out. One was some first come sites where we had reservations beginning on the 14th. Unfortunately they were in a different loop and most had someone in the site already staying past Thursday. The loop also was not well suited for larger trailers like ours.

On to the second option, it was an area called Sand Flats. To get to it, you had a fairly steep climb out of town (Paul said no problem with the trailer though). Someone shared their day pass with us so we could drive in and take a look. Unfortunately, there were only a few sites with possible openings for Thursday (unless the people renewed in the morning) that would be suitable. This is quite the area for mountain biking over slick rock.

The third option was even less likely. It was another campground that was small and didn’t take reservations. We talked with the camp host who told us people would be lining up at the gate before 7 am and there would likely be 6 or 7 people trying for each site!

So, back into town for cell signal to check out some private parks. We finally found one on the south end of town called Moab Rim RV Campark. They had overflow sites without hookups we could take for as long as we needed. We selected one at the back of the park with a view of the red rock out our dining window and very little highway noise!

Feeling much better that we had secured our spot, we drove back to Monticello. Along the road we were treated to the view of an arch called Wilson Arch.