Arches National Park

Arches National Park, Moab, Utah.

Arches was one of the best surprises we have had on the trip. We drove from Yellowstone to Moab, Utah where we explored Arches National Park. The sandstone rock formations are really deep red-orange and make for some amazing climbing and great pictures.

This formation is called the three gossips. Doug wanted to call them Kelly, Miller and Annette. I told him he was just jealous because if he had a formation that looked like him and all of his friends it would be a single rock sticking out of the ground.

This formation is called Courthouse Towers.

Peyton at Courthouse Towers. Doug said that's the closest he wants Peyton to be to the Courthouse.

Ditto - Eli

This is balancing rock. It's called that for obvious reasons. This picture doesn't really give you an idea of size, but it's huge.

This provides a little better perspective. The few dots on the right are Peyton, Eli, and me.

This is bouble arch. Again, the size in the photo is misleading.

This is the same double arch but closer. If you look down at the bottom you can see people hiking.

Peyton wanted to climb all over the arches and really there were tons of people there who were. I thought for sure I was going to witness a scene from "When Vacations Attack" but luckily, everyone was fine.

 Sitting on the right side of the bottom of the arch is Peyton and me. It was actually quite a vertical climb to get to, but we did it.

 Awesome picture from within the arch.

The arch in the center of the photo is called the Delicate Arch. This photo is from the viewing site that can be reached by an automobile. But Peyton wanted to hike to it for a close view.

So he and Doug hiked to it while Eli and I stayed in the truck. It was 100 degrees in the middle of the day and we had drunk all our water except for a half a water bottle that they took with them. It was 1.5 miles up to the arch and most of it was uphill. I knew it wasn't a good idea.



But they made it. Peyton is holding Doug up in this picture. This is before the 1.5 mile hike back out. I thought Doug was going to die of heat stroke. We still didn't have water and had to drive about 15 miles out of the park to get to the visitors' center to the nearest drinking water. We fondly refer to this episode as the time Peyton tried to kill Doug.