Day 5- Arches National Park and Moab, UT

And here we are at the Delicate Arch I was talking about the day before, only this time, we made the hike out to the arch to get some close up pictures.

Delicate Arch was extraordinarily cool and it was a very popular destination for the Arches tourists, but Katy and I got there early and managed to avoid much of the rush later on.
Right before the we got to the arch on our hike, we came to this little arch on our right that you could get up to and it sort of framed Delicate Arch and some of the surrounding scenery. It was only about 50 feet, but it was a very steep grade, so Katy sent me up to get pictures.
I love this view from the little arch to the Delicate Arch. Dean did a great job climbing and taking the pictures.

We met some really nice people on the hike up to the Arch. Many were from out of state and even out of country. As of today we have seen 44 different state license plates and 4 Canadian Provinces. We heard lots of accents and different languages also being spoken

When I say hike, I don't think that encompasses the difficulty of what we did to get to the Delicate Arch. The trip was 3 miles round trip with a 500 ft. elevation gain to get to the arch. In addition, we were already at around 4300 ft. elevation at the base of our hike, so by the time we got to the top, we were struggling for oxygen. In this picture you can barely make out the parking lot in the very center of the picture.

And that picture of the parking lot was taken before we finished going up the biggest "hill" on the climb, the rest of which is seen here.

See those little ant looking things toward the skyline? Those are other people on the hike.

Rock art is fairly common in this area. It was really neat to see upclose.

Dean and I did hike the short .4 mile trail to the Double Arch after we finished the Delicate Arch hike.

Here is the Double Arch, that we hiked (a much shorter distance and not nearly as much elevation gain) to after the Delicate Arch. The front arch here is the biggest in the park at 144 ft. tall at it's highest point.

The views were spectactular. This was my favorite arch by far.

You can see several smaller arches around the Double Arch area.

again here is Pothole Arch. It fascinates me how it was created and that there is a giant circle cut in the bottom of a rock.

After our hiking adventures in Arches, we were exhausted. We ventured into Moab looking for lunch and found Pasta Jay's. It was a little pricey, but the food was worth it :)

We headed back to camp and took a nap in the car with the doors open and the sun shades up. Dean and I went back to Moab eventually to take care of some necessities like laundry.

It was a lovely end to a great day, especially since we got to take a shower at one of the local RV campgrounds (for only $3!).

Looking forward to tomorrow as we explore Canyonlands National Park!