More Travels 4-All in a Day's Walk

All in a Day's Walk

Andy added oil to the car this morning. "I don't want to take any chances," he said. "It's a little low and the stretch of highway to Moab, Utah is lonely."
"The sign said 'NO SERVICES' for 54 miles," I told him, when we got off exit 214 of I-70 toward Cisco, Utah.

Cliffs carved by the Colorado River rise skyward in Westwater.

The conversation reminded me that this trip would undoubtedly exceed costs of the previous three trips per day. With the car rental at $29.20 a day, we won't keep our daily costs under $100. But we'll try to make it close. "No way tonight," said And. "Moab is touristy... a big biking area. Even the motel is expensive."
We passed three tiny two-passenger vintage cars on the highway. "There must be a car show going on in Moab this weekend," said Andy. The fourth vintage vehicle even had a sag wagon nearby.

Early morning clouds promise rain later in the day.

"Not a race," said one driver, when we stopped by the Colorado River at Dewey Recreation Site. "It's just a tour at a fast pace."
By 10 a.m. we played hop, skip and jump for all the pull-outs with at least 50 vintage racers. They roared along the narrow two-lane pavement of route #128 as it skirted the winding Colorado River through Westwater Canyon.
Fisher Tower turnoff was a damp red clay bed into the towering inner canyon walls.
"We've driven on a lot worse," I said, as Andy maneuvered between low spots and washouts.
Ten cars parked at the Photo Trail lot indicated many others traversed the turnoff before we did, but the dearth of people told us everyone else chose the three-hour Fisher Tower Hiking Trail. We took photo opportunities and headed back out.

In spite of road construction delays,
the scenery is spectacular.

"Now I see why they keep bulldozers here," said Andy. "When it does rain that red clay washes right over the road."

Rock pedestals and spires
surround us at every turn.

Horses from Sorrel Ranch Resort crossed the main road #128 just before we turned onto Lassel Loop Road. A mile up the slope, Andy turned around. "We'll come back here," he said. "Those clouds in the distance are just too ominous, and I want to take advantage of the nice weather here for hiking today." The car temperature read 86 degrees outside.  Lots more horses grazed at Red Cliffs Ranch, and lodge and cabins lined the river bank. "Between river rafting and horseback riding, I could vacation here," I told him.
"And I bet you'd cost me a small fortune!" he grinned.

Andy poses at the top of Photo Trail.

Making it past the road construction on the last stretch toward Moab presented challenge and a half to patience. A series of lights poorly timed allowed four or five vehicles at once to traverse the single-lane stretches where the Colorado River had washed out sections of both the bike lane and the road.

Dessert plants accent the landscape.

Finally, at noon we reached the entrance to Arches National Park.
At Park Avenue Viewpoint and Trailhead we stopped for photographs. Every parking place in the double-lane lot filled quickly. "And it's only Wednesday," said Andy. "What will this place be like on the weekend?"

Clouds move in and out,
adding shadows on the monoliths.
 

Park Avenue never looked so classy.

Two middle aged women asked me to take pictures for them. They reciprocated. Every turn offered a different spectacular backdrop.
We got out again at La Sal Mountains Viewpoint for photos of the Tower of Babel, Sheep Rock and the Three Gossips, all rock monoliths in a panorama of red cliffs and towers. To our left stretched The Great Wall, massive red stone cliffs that ended in an assortment of spires called The Rock Pinnacles. 
We stopped again for a picture of one graceful pinnacle rising at least a hundred feet above us.

The Tower of Babel provides
a landmark in the back country.

At Balanced Rock we parked to walk around the famous tourist landmark. The Entrada sandstone boulder perched atop the rock pinnacle at the 5,000-foot elevation is a lot bigger close up.  "I read that it's totally deceiving," said Andy. The illustrative sign estimated the Balanced Rock to be 55 feet tall and weigh 3,500 tons. "That's seven million pounds!" exclaimed Andy. I lay almost prone on the back side of the circular path to get the picture.

The Three Gossips earn their name from early times.

Delicate Arch Trail was an amazing journey into the back country. "Be sure you take water," people warned, as we started the hike. A hot sun beat down as we crossed patches of powdery sand, stepped over rocks and climbed and climbed. The stretch crossed a massive sandstone dome. Up and up we trekked for a mile or more.

Balanced Rock
identifies this Park of marvels.

The last half mile wound upwards between monoliths and rock spires, around sandy puddles of last night's rain water and along cliff edges.

Balanced Rock defies the rules of physics.

We rounded a massive rock face about 500 feet down,
                              






carefully staying on the inside of the chiseled-out trail. And Voila! There it was--magnificent, huge, breathtaking, an arch so gigantic it reduces humans to mere ants. Every painful minute of the hike in was worth the beauty of those views of Delicate Arch.
The walk out was a downhill pleasure. "You're almost there," we told people who agonized on the way up. "Whatever you do, don't turn back. You don't want to miss the arch."

On top of the world Delicate Arch
majestically reaches skyward.

On the way back down, we followed a side trail to Ute petroglyphs, remnants of Indian stone paintings from between 1650 and 1850. Paleo-Indian cultures had inhabited the valley some 12,000 years ago. They practiced a nomadic lifestyle, collecting plants, hunting the now extinct mammoths and mastodons. Their distinctive Clovis and Folsom points have been found near the park.
Farther down and closer to the parking lot was Wolfe Ranch, the remnants of a log cabin and storage house with mud chinking and its nearby corral.

Huge and magnificent, Delicate Arch dwarfs everything in sight.

"You can see why he picked this spot," said Andy. Just below the cabin flowed the muddy, trickling pool from last night's rain. John Wesley Wolfe had  moved West, looking for a drier climate, because of a  nagging leg injury from the Civil War. He and his son Fred settled in a one-room cabin on 100 acres on the bank of Salt Wash, a more permanent home than other ranchers in the area. He had enough water for a few cattle. By building a small dam across Salt Wash, he could grow vegetables. He and Fred lived alone for ten years until 1906, when the family arrived-- his daughter Flora Stanley, her husband, and their children. She convinced him to build a new cabin with a wood floor. That is the cabin still standing today. They all returned to Ohio in 1910, and Wolfe died in Etna, Ohio in 1913, at the age of 84.

The Wolfe cabin stands as it did when John built it in 1906.

When we parked at Delicate Arch Viewpoint, there wasn't much question which trail we would take. Everyone headed for Lower Delicate Arch Viewpoint, a short block walk down below the road with an angled view up. So we set out for Upper Delicate Arch Viewpoint, a half mile climb up the valley. In the distance people under the Delicate Arch were just moving specks of color.
As the sun dropped lower after 4:00 p.m., we captured more amazing photos of the Garden of Eden pillars. "I'm too tired to walk more," I told Andy, and the major pullouts hummed with busloads of foreign visitors from Germany and Japan and Korea.
"Tomorrow," he promised.
And I whole heartedly agreed.

Clouds and shadows play on the formations.

Near the park entrance, the Visitor Center drew crowds. People filled water bottles, took pictures of the bronze statues of pronghorn antelope, crows and big horn sheep; browsed in the gift shop; and read the historical displays. We waited for the 5:00 p.m. showing of Secrets of Red Rock, a film about the geology of Arches and Canyonlands. The two national parks, located about 30 miles apart, were both formed by water: Arches, because water evaporated an underlying dome of salt, and Canyonlands, because the Colorado and Green River Systems cut through the uplifted Colorado Plateau. Ironic that in the dessert the architect was water.

Utterly beautiful and utterly desolate, formations dominate
Arches National Park.

"Utterly beautiful, but utterly desolate," said Andy about the scenery, as we took a back road along the Colorado River into a canyon after dinner. And a mile back in along the scenic drive, we found people living in caves in the side of the cliff. It was the cave-dwelling Anasazi all over again in modern times. Absolutely unbelievable!