Back from Arches

The trip to Arches went great. The only downside was that my wife decided to stay home with our baby. While that made things a lot easier, and we were able to maintain a more rigorous pace, I missed having her there to share the sights.

My kids had a great time with their cousins, who seemed quite taken by the stark contrast between the scenery in Arches and what is found in their native Vermont. My own kids also thought it was pretty cool, and they did pretty well on the hike to Delicate Arch, which was the most challenging hike we attempted. I did carry my three-year old a good part of the way, but she also walked a number of miles on the different hikes.

Her favorite was Sand Dune Arch, which is carved in a narrow area between two high rock fins. The result is that part of the area was shaded, and the adults could rest against the sheer rock wall and put their feed in the cool sand while the kids played in the sand and ran up and down the short hill to the arch. My son preferred Delicate Arch, and my oldest enjoyed North and South Windows. It's hard for me to single out a favorite, but it would probably have to be Delicate Arch.

We also visited Dead Horse Point on the trip. I still remember the trauma my dad caused me by pretending to throw me over Dead Horse Point, which drops 2000 feet nearly straight down to the Colorado River. It was a very impressive sight, lessened only slightly by a series of large evaporative pools on the valley floor used in a potash mining operation that utilizes water from the Colorado. Anyway, I made sure not to pretend to throw any of my kids over, but I still awoke several times that night from a half-sleep, imagining one of my kids or I was falling from a cliff.

A wonderful surprise on this trip was the Island in the Sky district of Canyonlands. None of us had ever been to Canyonlands, but we decided to go there after visiting Dead Horse Point and finding ourselves only a few miles away. In my mind, Canyonlands is nearly as impressive as the Grand Canyon. True, the Grand Canyon drops twice as far, but when you're talking 2000 or 4000 feet, it's all pretty impressive. Because we were only there a few hours, we didn't have time to do too many hikes, but the ones we did were awesome. We hiked Mesa Arch, which is an easy, meandering trail to an arch that looks nice in itself, but is made spectacular by the fact that it sits on a sheer precipice. Seeing 1500 feet of empty space below the arch is pretty cool.