Utah parks, October 12-16, 2006

Arches National Park

Arches is just a couple miles north of Moab, where we were staying. We went there three times. We arrived in Moab around 3pm on Thursday, checked in to our B&B, and then went to the Double Arch and Windows area. That's when we discovered that we'd left the camera memory at home. We went back for the ranger-led Fiery Furnace hike on Saturday afternoon. It was raining, and we thought the hike might be cancelled, but the rain had mostly stopped by the hike start time. Our last day, we hiked to Delicate and Landscape Arches before heading back to Salt Lake City.

Canyonlands National Park

Canyonlands National Park is about 30 miles from Moab. It's not that far, but for some reason is much less busy than Arches. We went to the Island in the Sky district, which is a mesa about 2,000 feet above the Colorado and Green Rivers. On Friday, we only made it to the visitor center and one viewpoint before going back to the B&B for a nap. Sunday, we drove the entire park road, stopped at all of the viewpoints, and did one longer hike.