My mom has wanted to go to Arches National Park for years, and this year, she and my dad decided to make it happen! And since they kind of like me, they decided to bring me along.
Sunday, June 4:
I got to the airport in Nashville at 5:30am to catch a flight to Salt Lake City. My mom told me that it was significantly less expensive to fly into SLC and for us to drive to the park than to fly to a city closer to Arches.
My parents picked me up in their rental car, and we drove to a few SLC sites, including the wall of books mural and the Gilgal statue garden, before heading to the lunch buffet at the Little America Inn. The buffet had very traditional brunch food done very well. The outside of the Inn wasn't terribly pretty, but the inside was lovely.
The Newpark Resort in Park City was having good deals on rooms because it was off season, so we got a beautiful room with a private hot tub on the balcony, which we enjoyed all afternoon.
For dinner we went to the Troll Hallen Lounge at the Stein Erickson Lodge, where we got to sit outside and look out over the mountains, which would have been covered in snow just a few months before. Again, being Park City's off season, there were enough people around for things to be open but not so many that we were crowded. The appetizers at the Troll Hallen Lounge were surprisingly large, so a light eater would feel very comfortable with an appetizer as a meal. My mom and I didn't know that, so we split two appetizers and a giant salad, and we got dessert. I thought we might explode, but it was great food and a great view.
Monday, June 5:
On Monday, we visited some family favorites for meals, Einstein's Bagels and Dicky's BBQ. Other than that, we spent the morning at the hotel. The whole hotel was nice and had amenities such as a heated pool, steam room, and sauna, which I unfortunately couldn't enjoy because I was stuck on phone calls most of the morning.
In the afternoon, we picked up what would be our home for the next few days, our RV. We rented the 30ft RV from Cruise America. The 30ft is meant for a larger family than ours, but apparently there was limited availability for the smaller ones. A larger RV was sure to make our first RV trip more comfortable though!
We drove the several hours to Moab. The view was lovely, but I felt a little sick during the drive, so I ended up sleeping most of the way. My dad said driving the RV was easier than he expected, considering he was a little nervous about it beforehand.
For dinner, we went to Zax's in Moab. We sat outside upstairs and had margaritas and the soup, salad, and pizza buffet. The food wasn't amazing, but it was decent, and we had a nice view of the city.
We got to our campground Archview in time for sunset. Having never gone to an RV campsite before, I was surprised to find a playground, pool, waterplay area, and a grilling site near some decorative teepees.
We had some trouble figuring out how to hook up all of our electricity and such, but we eventually got it all set up!
I want to mention here that we were in an RV with limited control over the temperature (besides an A/C unit that didn't work very well). Outside the RV, we were in a desert, meaning that it was really hot during the day and really cold at night. All of this would lead to what was probably the most challenging part of the trip: temperature control. Before leaving for the trip, we figured we would do our outdoor activities every morning then hide in our cool RV every afternoon. We had to quickly amend that to finding something to do elsewhere indoors every afternoon since our RV A/C unit could only get the temperature inside down to about 85 or 90 degrees in the hottest hours of the day. Nighttime was cold enough that we would have had to go buy extra blankets, if our trip were much longer, just to get a full night's sleep.
Enough about that. On to our first full day in Moab!
Tuesday, June 6:
We woke up early to have breakfast in the RV before checking in officially to the campground. We picked up a rental car then headed straight to Moab Jett for a jet boat tour. On the short van ride from the Jett offices to the Colorado River, our driver told us a little about Moab:
We met our boat captain Rob after the drive. Apparently he's one of the more crazy captains. One of his colleagues told us that Rob "likes to be in the river." And in the river we were. Between minutes of gentle floating, we were splashed and even dunked (causing waves to crash over us) so many times we were wet head to toe almost the entirety of the 2 hour trip. Rob even purposefully made waves with the wake of the speed boat just to dunk us one more time before dropping us back off at the end of the tour!
The trip was beautiful, though not for the faint of heart! They provided us with ziplock bags to keep our belongings dry, and with the craziness of Rob, I ended up just taking most of my pictures through the bag.
We had lunch across the street from the jet boat company at a restaurant called Eklectica, where we sat outside and enjoyed the nice day and food.
We then went to the Arches visitor's center to look at the displays, gift shop, and Arches movie. My dad and I (Mom didn't want to join) were also able to sign up for the Fiery Furnace trail. The Fiery Furnace is a maze-like trail made from a collapsed salt dome that created the Salt Valley. On this Tuesday afternoon in early June, the next ranger-guided tour wasn't available until Saturday afternoon. But we were able to get self-guided permits for the next day. Our permits were $6 each. After a short introductory video and ranger talk, we were good to go!
We went back to the RV to rest for the afternoon, but the heat inside our giant tin can was too much, so we went out for a quick bite to eat before...
Dan Mick's jeep tour! Ours was a 3 hour sunset tour through the Hell's Revenge trail. The name of the trail gives a hint of the intensity of this experience. Just the 3 of us were in our jeep with our driver Curtis, though we drove the trail with 4 other jeeps. Much of the 3min video at the bottom of the page consists of clips from the jeep tour.
We rarely went fast in the jeeps, which was nice. It was intense because of what our jeeps climbed. There were times we were completely vertical going up or down. Our drivers liked to scare us sometimes by rolling unexpectedly down the hill or turning off the lights after sunset. We also spent a lot of time right on the very edge of a steep drop. We stopped at the top of a ridge overlooking the Colorado River to watch sunset, and our guides had snacks and drinks for us. It was completely dark by the time we left. This part of the trip was certainly exhilarating, and I, for one, loved it!
A few notes:
We went right to bed after our guide dropped us off, our fingers sore from gripping the jeep handle so hard for the entirety of the trip.
Wednesday, June 7:
Unfortunately, there was construction going on at Arches during the time we were there, meaning the park was only open 7am to 7pm. To avoid the heat as much as possible, we got there right when it opened! Understaffing meant the front entrance was unattended, but we had already paid for our tickets and drove right on in.
We had a ~30 minute drive to the parking lot for our first hike to Delicate Arch, the largest free-standing arch in the park at 64 feet high and 45 feet wide. The hike was rated difficult by the Arches visitor center. It took us about 2.5 hours to do the whole thing, including the 30 minutes we spent with the other millions of tourists at the top, overlooking the arch.
My parents made fun of me for it, but I used an umbrella, along with a group of Amish girls and one Asian lady (with her son's tiny Spiderman umbrella overhead), for shade. It was a fantastic idea, and I would recommend it to everyone. I didn't get overheated from the sun at all. Most everyone else on the trail dealt with the sun with hats and sunglasses. The trail itself wasn't too hard, but it was a lot of time in the direct sun without shade for protection.
Some people hiked an extra few minutes to line up (extremely politely, I might add) for a picture under the arch, but the path was pretty steep, and it's hard to tell it's you in a picture under such a large arch anyway, so we stayed at the top to take pictures. There was also a longer path to a high rock overlooking the arch, but we decided to turn around and go back.
There was one viewing arch (of Delicate Arch) called Frame Arch. The short path up to it was quite steep to get up and down, but the view was lovely if you could make it up there.
Another 10 minute drive got us to our next stop, the Fiery Furnace!
My mom dropped us off at the parking lot. Dad and I then had to hunt a little for the permit only entrance and puzzle out the right path (GO COUNTERCLOCKWISE, as the ranger said in the orientation talk). But we figured it out!
We encountered our first major obstacle in the first 15 minutes, which is good for those wanting to test the waters before committing to the entire circular(ish) path.
We went early enough (10:30am-1:30pm), and there was enough shade and wind, to keep us comfortable. The obstacles weren't so difficult to make us overheat or become breathless. But the lack of signage almost got us. For the self-guided permits, the only guidance hikers get is a series of little brown arrows marking the 2 mile path. A few times, we really had to search for the right path. We tried going down every possible path until we ruled out all but one, the others being impassible. Or we would run into another group either passing us or accidentally going clockwise, and we would talk briefly to figure out the right direction. The only time we got really badly lost was in the last quarter mile of the trail, where we couldn't find an arrow anywhere and ended up having to search for the parking lot in the distance and head in that general direction. That was the only the time the path was physically exhausting and kind of scary. The rest of the hike, there were certainly things we could have fallen or slipped on, but it, for the most part, was comfortably challenging for two fit adults.
See the arrow? Yeah, a lot harder when it could be anywhere.
Besides the signage, I really enjoyed the hike. The only hikes I had been on prior were clearly marked and were only difficult if there was an incline. In the Fiery Furnace, we had to climb, jump, and step carefully. We were surrounded by incredible works of nature, and we were almost constantly alone with it. Frequently, I was reminded of Petra in Jordan.
We saw one girl alone on the path, which we thought was a bad idea. Even if you're unlikely to fall to your death in the Fiery Furnace, it would have been really easy get lost or twist an ankle and not be found. I wouldn't recommend going alone.
Overall, I thought it wasn't a horrible idea that we did the self-guided hike, but it would have been nice to have had more guidance. Bring more food and water than you think you need in case you get lost or want to take your time.
Dad's thoughts were that it was beautiful but not for the navigationally challenged. We saw no trash at all, and there were some great spots for pictures. He said that he wouldn't do the self-guided hike again but that he would definitely go in again with a ranger.
Along the path, there are a few dead ends (with signs saying so), and we went down two of them. I thought they were definitely worth it, just further away from the initial signs than we thought.
After finally making it out of the Fiery Furnace, we went to Fiesta Mexicana for lunch and drank a lot of soda. They had pretty good food, too!
After lunch, we tried to go to the Kane Creek Blvd petroglyphs, but we had some trouble finding them. Or at least all of them. We eventually found one site to the right of the parking lot at Moon Flower Canyon. It was a holy place in ancient times, and the petroglyphs date from the Archaic (6,000-1,000 BCE) to the Formative (450-1,300 CE) periods.
We got ice cream and pie at the Moab Diner. The ice creams were huge and really good. Despite the crowds inside in mid-afternoon, we were served and could sit immediately. Then we came back to the RV again and took showers for some respite from the heat. In the evening, we went to dinner south of town at Susie's Branding Iron, recommended to us by Curtis, our jeep driver. They were very friendly, and the prime rib was excellent. Finally, we walked around the shops in town until 8:30pm, when the temperature outside cooled to below 90 degrees, meaning our little A/C would actually be able to keep us cool enough to go to bed!
Thursday, June 8:
We got to Arches early again to find a few formations, starting with the Balanced Rock. Eventually the faster erosion of the Dewey Bridge (the pile the balanced rock stands on) will cause the formation to collapse.
We did the easy, short walk to Double Arch, which was probably my favorite formation of the trip. The larger arch is the third-largest in the park at 144 feet wide and 112 feet high. The smaller second arch is 67 feet wide by 86 feet high.
See teeny tiny Olivia?
On our drive out, we saw the Garden of Eden, the Courthouse Towers, and Park Ave.
We went back to Moab for a good breakfast at the Pancake Haus followed by a few hours back in the RV for rest and emails on the campsite's wifi. We had lunch at the Atomic Burger. The food was good, but it was kind of expensive, and the service wasn't very good even though we were the only ones in the restaurant for the first half hour we were there. We then went to Moab Coffee Roasters for really good ice cream and some coffee. Then we went next door to the shop Moab Made. It has some neat locally-made items, and we spent quite a while inside looking around.
We drove to Lion's Park to meet our Moab Petroglyph Tours bus. We were the only ones on the tour, which meant we could spread out. Sean-Paul, our surfer dude guide, gave us his full attention and lots of peanut M&Ms. I can't say the tour was what any of us expected! Sean-Paul definitely got us to some great places to see petroglyphs and pictographs. BUT. He didn't seem to know much about them beyond his wild speculations! At one stop, he read the sign and was shocked to find out how long ago the dinosaurs roamed in that very spot. He was definitely amusing, but if you want anthropological explanations of the petroglyphs, I'd recommend you look somewhere else! Luckily, I suppose, I couldn't find Moab Petroglyph Tours' online presence, so I'll just show the logo (from a brochure we found in Atomic Burger).
Some terminology: Petroglyphs are carved into the dark patina that forms on the rocks, meaning the carving is lighter than its background. Pictographs were painted with berries, blood, etc., often under an alcove, on lighter rock. On this tour, we saw both petroglyphs and pictographs, but the one site of pictographs we saw were too far away for a good picture.
Our first stop was at the Big Bear. There are some sheep from the Fremont time, but the people holding bows and arrows were drawn later, which we know because the weapon wasn't invented until after the Fremont time. The bear carving is of unknown origin.
The second stop was at Poison Spider. We didn't do the climb to see them, but Sean-Paul pointed out dinosaur tracks and some petroglyphs of people and a horse.
We also went to part of the Potash site, where we could walk right up to the petroglyphs.
The forth stop was the Utah Highway 279 Rock Art Site, which is an extension of where we saw the Big Bear. The carvings were a little up the cliff face, but we could walk right up to the wall.
Sean-Paul dropped us back off at the park, then we walked across the bridge to see a couple more petroglyphs on our own.
We then drove about 30 miles to Dead Horse Point State Park. We didn't spend long there, but it was a highlight of the trip for me. According to legend, the point was once used to corral wild mustangs in the mesa. Cowboys then selected the horses they wanted to keep, and, for unknown reasons, left the other horses corralled without water, where they died of thirst.
A scary driveway overlooking a drop off a cliff in Moab took us to dinner at the Sunset Diner. The Linguini Olivia (named after the owner...not me...) was really good, and the views were fairly pretty. It was more expensive than I expected, particularly considering we didn't need to dress up for it. The building was the former home of Charlie Steen, "The Uranium King." When the Atomic Energy Commission was offering a large reward to anyone who found domestic uranium, Charlie found some after three long years of searching, rocketing his family into instant fortune.
After dinner we went to Golf Course Rock Art to see the "Moab Man" (far right in the picture below) and other petroglyphs from 725-2,000 years ago. A neat petroglyph we hadn't seen before was one of a sleigh with a deer pulling it. The site was really cool because we could see a lot from the car or just a few steps from it.
Friday, June 9:
We got up early to return our rental car then to go to the Jailhouse Cafe for breakfast. The food was good, but the drinks (except coffee and water) weren't refillable. The strange name comes from the fact that it was used as the County Courthouse in the 1890s.
We hopped back in the RV to head to Sego Canyon (~20 miles from Moab) for more petroglyphs. Sego Canyon was really cool because it was the most clear site of a pictograph we'd seen so far. It was our favorite stop for petroglyphs/pictographs. Recent vandalism is a big problem at all the petroglyph sites, and you can see some below, such as the F.B.
Note: The most helpful petroglyph book we found was called Moab Rock Art: Driving Tour of Moab Area Petroglyphs and Pictographs. We bought it at the Arches Visitor Center.
We stopped by Sego Canyon on our way to Provo, UT, which is about an hour outside Salt Lake City and about 3 hours from Moab. We went to Amber's Family Restaurant in Provo for an okay dinner before checking into our RV campsite at Utah Lake State Park. The camp was lovely, along a lake, and had significantly more room to spread out than did our other Moab site. The big problem here were the bugs. Little flying things. EVERYWHERE.
We tried to rent a boat, but the waters were so rough we turned around almost immediately. But not before getting some pictures!
Instead, we spent the afternoon reading and playing cards in the RV. At sunset, we went to the grill at our camp station and tried to roast marshmallows for s'mores. Tried is definitely the operative word. The wind was blowing so hard that we couldn't get the fire to build. But we got a few flames going long enough to get our fill of dessert and hot enough embers to make a heart.
Around this time...the bugs came out. In swarms. Probably because we were so close to the lake. It was crazy and disgusting, so we just hid inside the RV until bed!
Saturday, June 10:
The next morning, we packed up and quickly headed out for our goodbyes.
Thanks for a great trip, Mom and Dad!
Gallery of desert foliage:
On Monday, we visited some family favorites for meals, Einstein's Bagels and Dicky's BBQ. Other than that, we spent the morning at the hotel. The whole hotel was nice and had amenities such as a heated pool, steam room, and sauna, which I unfortunately couldn't enjoy because I was stuck on phone calls most of the morning.
In the afternoon, we picked up what would be our home for the next few days, our RV. We rented the 30ft RV from Cruise America. The 30ft is meant for a larger family than ours, but apparently there was limited availability for the smaller ones. A larger RV was sure to make our first RV trip more comfortable though!
We drove the several hours to Moab. The view was lovely, but I felt a little sick during the drive, so I ended up sleeping most of the way. My dad said driving the RV was easier than he expected, considering he was a little nervous about it beforehand.
For dinner, we went to Zax's in Moab. We sat outside upstairs and had margaritas and the soup, salad, and pizza buffet. The food wasn't amazing, but it was decent, and we had a nice view of the city.
We got to our campground Archview in time for sunset. Having never gone to an RV campsite before, I was surprised to find a playground, pool, waterplay area, and a grilling site near some decorative teepees.
We had some trouble figuring out how to hook up all of our electricity and such, but we eventually got it all set up!
I want to mention here that we were in an RV with limited control over the temperature (besides an A/C unit that didn't work very well). Outside the RV, we were in a desert, meaning that it was really hot during the day and really cold at night. All of this would lead to what was probably the most challenging part of the trip: temperature control. Before leaving for the trip, we figured we would do our outdoor activities every morning then hide in our cool RV every afternoon. We had to quickly amend that to finding something to do elsewhere indoors every afternoon since our RV A/C unit could only get the temperature inside down to about 85 or 90 degrees in the hottest hours of the day. Nighttime was cold enough that we would have had to go buy extra blankets, if our trip were much longer, just to get a full night's sleep.
Enough about that. On to our first full day in Moab!
Tuesday, June 6:
We woke up early to have breakfast in the RV before checking in officially to the campground. We picked up a rental car then headed straight to Moab Jett for a jet boat tour. On the short van ride from the Jett offices to the Colorado River, our driver told us a little about Moab:
- Historians think the Moab valley has been inhabited for 12,000 years.
- It was mostly empty in the middle of the 1000's CE until the early 1900s, when uranium was discovered. Many people came to Moab to mine the uranium.
- The valley turned into a ghost town when the price of uranium fell in the 1970-80's.
- Finally, the city promoted tourism for the parks, and it woke up again.
We met our boat captain Rob after the drive. Apparently he's one of the more crazy captains. One of his colleagues told us that Rob "likes to be in the river." And in the river we were. Between minutes of gentle floating, we were splashed and even dunked (causing waves to crash over us) so many times we were wet head to toe almost the entirety of the 2 hour trip. Rob even purposefully made waves with the wake of the speed boat just to dunk us one more time before dropping us back off at the end of the tour!
The trip was beautiful, though not for the faint of heart! They provided us with ziplock bags to keep our belongings dry, and with the craziness of Rob, I ended up just taking most of my pictures through the bag.
We had lunch across the street from the jet boat company at a restaurant called Eklectica, where we sat outside and enjoyed the nice day and food.
We then went to the Arches visitor's center to look at the displays, gift shop, and Arches movie. My dad and I (Mom didn't want to join) were also able to sign up for the Fiery Furnace trail. The Fiery Furnace is a maze-like trail made from a collapsed salt dome that created the Salt Valley. On this Tuesday afternoon in early June, the next ranger-guided tour wasn't available until Saturday afternoon. But we were able to get self-guided permits for the next day. Our permits were $6 each. After a short introductory video and ranger talk, we were good to go!
We went back to the RV to rest for the afternoon, but the heat inside our giant tin can was too much, so we went out for a quick bite to eat before...
Dan Mick's jeep tour! Ours was a 3 hour sunset tour through the Hell's Revenge trail. The name of the trail gives a hint of the intensity of this experience. Just the 3 of us were in our jeep with our driver Curtis, though we drove the trail with 4 other jeeps. Much of the 3min video at the bottom of the page consists of clips from the jeep tour.
We rarely went fast in the jeeps, which was nice. It was intense because of what our jeeps climbed. There were times we were completely vertical going up or down. Our drivers liked to scare us sometimes by rolling unexpectedly down the hill or turning off the lights after sunset. We also spent a lot of time right on the very edge of a steep drop. We stopped at the top of a ridge overlooking the Colorado River to watch sunset, and our guides had snacks and drinks for us. It was completely dark by the time we left. This part of the trip was certainly exhilarating, and I, for one, loved it!
A few notes:
- I found out I really like the scraggly desert foliage. I won't bore you with the millions of pictures I took of plants on this trip here, so check out the gallery at the bottom of the page!
- We saw dinosaur tracks in a spot that experts think could have been a feeding site. The guides/drivers even had the two kids in the group act out a dinosaur kill scene! It was cute.
- The two craziest parts of the trail are so intense that our guides call one the Highway to Hell and the other the Stairway to Heaven.
- On one particularly quick drop, my mom hilariously called Curtis "a terrible man," prompting him to laugh and tell all the other drivers as soon as we stopped.
We went right to bed after our guide dropped us off, our fingers sore from gripping the jeep handle so hard for the entirety of the trip.
Wednesday, June 7:
Unfortunately, there was construction going on at Arches during the time we were there, meaning the park was only open 7am to 7pm. To avoid the heat as much as possible, we got there right when it opened! Understaffing meant the front entrance was unattended, but we had already paid for our tickets and drove right on in.
We had a ~30 minute drive to the parking lot for our first hike to Delicate Arch, the largest free-standing arch in the park at 64 feet high and 45 feet wide. The hike was rated difficult by the Arches visitor center. It took us about 2.5 hours to do the whole thing, including the 30 minutes we spent with the other millions of tourists at the top, overlooking the arch.
My parents made fun of me for it, but I used an umbrella, along with a group of Amish girls and one Asian lady (with her son's tiny Spiderman umbrella overhead), for shade. It was a fantastic idea, and I would recommend it to everyone. I didn't get overheated from the sun at all. Most everyone else on the trail dealt with the sun with hats and sunglasses. The trail itself wasn't too hard, but it was a lot of time in the direct sun without shade for protection.
Some people hiked an extra few minutes to line up (extremely politely, I might add) for a picture under the arch, but the path was pretty steep, and it's hard to tell it's you in a picture under such a large arch anyway, so we stayed at the top to take pictures. There was also a longer path to a high rock overlooking the arch, but we decided to turn around and go back.
There was one viewing arch (of Delicate Arch) called Frame Arch. The short path up to it was quite steep to get up and down, but the view was lovely if you could make it up there.
Another 10 minute drive got us to our next stop, the Fiery Furnace!
My mom dropped us off at the parking lot. Dad and I then had to hunt a little for the permit only entrance and puzzle out the right path (GO COUNTERCLOCKWISE, as the ranger said in the orientation talk). But we figured it out!
We encountered our first major obstacle in the first 15 minutes, which is good for those wanting to test the waters before committing to the entire circular(ish) path.
We went early enough (10:30am-1:30pm), and there was enough shade and wind, to keep us comfortable. The obstacles weren't so difficult to make us overheat or become breathless. But the lack of signage almost got us. For the self-guided permits, the only guidance hikers get is a series of little brown arrows marking the 2 mile path. A few times, we really had to search for the right path. We tried going down every possible path until we ruled out all but one, the others being impassible. Or we would run into another group either passing us or accidentally going clockwise, and we would talk briefly to figure out the right direction. The only time we got really badly lost was in the last quarter mile of the trail, where we couldn't find an arrow anywhere and ended up having to search for the parking lot in the distance and head in that general direction. That was the only the time the path was physically exhausting and kind of scary. The rest of the hike, there were certainly things we could have fallen or slipped on, but it, for the most part, was comfortably challenging for two fit adults.
See the arrow? Yeah, a lot harder when it could be anywhere.
Besides the signage, I really enjoyed the hike. The only hikes I had been on prior were clearly marked and were only difficult if there was an incline. In the Fiery Furnace, we had to climb, jump, and step carefully. We were surrounded by incredible works of nature, and we were almost constantly alone with it. Frequently, I was reminded of Petra in Jordan.
We saw one girl alone on the path, which we thought was a bad idea. Even if you're unlikely to fall to your death in the Fiery Furnace, it would have been really easy get lost or twist an ankle and not be found. I wouldn't recommend going alone.
Overall, I thought it wasn't a horrible idea that we did the self-guided hike, but it would have been nice to have had more guidance. Bring more food and water than you think you need in case you get lost or want to take your time.
Dad's thoughts were that it was beautiful but not for the navigationally challenged. We saw no trash at all, and there were some great spots for pictures. He said that he wouldn't do the self-guided hike again but that he would definitely go in again with a ranger.
Along the path, there are a few dead ends (with signs saying so), and we went down two of them. I thought they were definitely worth it, just further away from the initial signs than we thought.
After finally making it out of the Fiery Furnace, we went to Fiesta Mexicana for lunch and drank a lot of soda. They had pretty good food, too!
After lunch, we tried to go to the Kane Creek Blvd petroglyphs, but we had some trouble finding them. Or at least all of them. We eventually found one site to the right of the parking lot at Moon Flower Canyon. It was a holy place in ancient times, and the petroglyphs date from the Archaic (6,000-1,000 BCE) to the Formative (450-1,300 CE) periods.
We got ice cream and pie at the Moab Diner. The ice creams were huge and really good. Despite the crowds inside in mid-afternoon, we were served and could sit immediately. Then we came back to the RV again and took showers for some respite from the heat. In the evening, we went to dinner south of town at Susie's Branding Iron, recommended to us by Curtis, our jeep driver. They were very friendly, and the prime rib was excellent. Finally, we walked around the shops in town until 8:30pm, when the temperature outside cooled to below 90 degrees, meaning our little A/C would actually be able to keep us cool enough to go to bed!
Thursday, June 8:
We got to Arches early again to find a few formations, starting with the Balanced Rock. Eventually the faster erosion of the Dewey Bridge (the pile the balanced rock stands on) will cause the formation to collapse.
We did the easy, short walk to Double Arch, which was probably my favorite formation of the trip. The larger arch is the third-largest in the park at 144 feet wide and 112 feet high. The smaller second arch is 67 feet wide by 86 feet high.
See teeny tiny Olivia?
On our drive out, we saw the Garden of Eden, the Courthouse Towers, and Park Ave.
We went back to Moab for a good breakfast at the Pancake Haus followed by a few hours back in the RV for rest and emails on the campsite's wifi. We had lunch at the Atomic Burger. The food was good, but it was kind of expensive, and the service wasn't very good even though we were the only ones in the restaurant for the first half hour we were there. We then went to Moab Coffee Roasters for really good ice cream and some coffee. Then we went next door to the shop Moab Made. It has some neat locally-made items, and we spent quite a while inside looking around.
We drove to Lion's Park to meet our Moab Petroglyph Tours bus. We were the only ones on the tour, which meant we could spread out. Sean-Paul, our surfer dude guide, gave us his full attention and lots of peanut M&Ms. I can't say the tour was what any of us expected! Sean-Paul definitely got us to some great places to see petroglyphs and pictographs. BUT. He didn't seem to know much about them beyond his wild speculations! At one stop, he read the sign and was shocked to find out how long ago the dinosaurs roamed in that very spot. He was definitely amusing, but if you want anthropological explanations of the petroglyphs, I'd recommend you look somewhere else! Luckily, I suppose, I couldn't find Moab Petroglyph Tours' online presence, so I'll just show the logo (from a brochure we found in Atomic Burger).
Some terminology: Petroglyphs are carved into the dark patina that forms on the rocks, meaning the carving is lighter than its background. Pictographs were painted with berries, blood, etc., often under an alcove, on lighter rock. On this tour, we saw both petroglyphs and pictographs, but the one site of pictographs we saw were too far away for a good picture.
Our first stop was at the Big Bear. There are some sheep from the Fremont time, but the people holding bows and arrows were drawn later, which we know because the weapon wasn't invented until after the Fremont time. The bear carving is of unknown origin.
The second stop was at Poison Spider. We didn't do the climb to see them, but Sean-Paul pointed out dinosaur tracks and some petroglyphs of people and a horse.
We also went to part of the Potash site, where we could walk right up to the petroglyphs.
The forth stop was the Utah Highway 279 Rock Art Site, which is an extension of where we saw the Big Bear. The carvings were a little up the cliff face, but we could walk right up to the wall.
Sean-Paul dropped us back off at the park, then we walked across the bridge to see a couple more petroglyphs on our own.
We then drove about 30 miles to Dead Horse Point State Park. We didn't spend long there, but it was a highlight of the trip for me. According to legend, the point was once used to corral wild mustangs in the mesa. Cowboys then selected the horses they wanted to keep, and, for unknown reasons, left the other horses corralled without water, where they died of thirst.
A scary driveway overlooking a drop off a cliff in Moab took us to dinner at the Sunset Diner. The Linguini Olivia (named after the owner...not me...) was really good, and the views were fairly pretty. It was more expensive than I expected, particularly considering we didn't need to dress up for it. The building was the former home of Charlie Steen, "The Uranium King." When the Atomic Energy Commission was offering a large reward to anyone who found domestic uranium, Charlie found some after three long years of searching, rocketing his family into instant fortune.
After dinner we went to Golf Course Rock Art to see the "Moab Man" (far right in the picture below) and other petroglyphs from 725-2,000 years ago. A neat petroglyph we hadn't seen before was one of a sleigh with a deer pulling it. The site was really cool because we could see a lot from the car or just a few steps from it.
Friday, June 9:
We got up early to return our rental car then to go to the Jailhouse Cafe for breakfast. The food was good, but the drinks (except coffee and water) weren't refillable. The strange name comes from the fact that it was used as the County Courthouse in the 1890s.
We hopped back in the RV to head to Sego Canyon (~20 miles from Moab) for more petroglyphs. Sego Canyon was really cool because it was the most clear site of a pictograph we'd seen so far. It was our favorite stop for petroglyphs/pictographs. Recent vandalism is a big problem at all the petroglyph sites, and you can see some below, such as the F.B.
Note: The most helpful petroglyph book we found was called Moab Rock Art: Driving Tour of Moab Area Petroglyphs and Pictographs. We bought it at the Arches Visitor Center.
We stopped by Sego Canyon on our way to Provo, UT, which is about an hour outside Salt Lake City and about 3 hours from Moab. We went to Amber's Family Restaurant in Provo for an okay dinner before checking into our RV campsite at Utah Lake State Park. The camp was lovely, along a lake, and had significantly more room to spread out than did our other Moab site. The big problem here were the bugs. Little flying things. EVERYWHERE.
We tried to rent a boat, but the waters were so rough we turned around almost immediately. But not before getting some pictures!
Instead, we spent the afternoon reading and playing cards in the RV. At sunset, we went to the grill at our camp station and tried to roast marshmallows for s'mores. Tried is definitely the operative word. The wind was blowing so hard that we couldn't get the fire to build. But we got a few flames going long enough to get our fill of dessert and hot enough embers to make a heart.
Around this time...the bugs came out. In swarms. Probably because we were so close to the lake. It was crazy and disgusting, so we just hid inside the RV until bed!
Saturday, June 10:
The next morning, we packed up and quickly headed out for our goodbyes.
Thanks for a great trip, Mom and Dad!
Gallery of desert foliage:
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