Arches Visit and Pictures

August 17, 2016

When we decided to pass through Moab on our way to Las Vegas I was hoping we would be able to to visit Arches, Dead Horse State Park, and Canyonlands.  Since we are still trying to figure out how to settle into our new RV life, we weren't able to find time to go to all 3.  We are still struggling to get organized and trying to figure out where everything is going to go what we can get rid of because there is just way too much stuff in our little tiny house on wheels.  I hate to admit it, but I have actually resorted to throwing perfectly good stuff away.  I was trying to hang on to stuff in the hopes that we could drop it off at Goodwill or some sort of donation center but it has started to become a burden to carry stuff around that I am willing to get rid of so I have resorted to putting stuff straight into the dumpster.  It has come down to my mental health versus feeling charitable and the guilt I am dealing with for throwing away perfectly good stuff is unfortunately quite a bit smaller right now than the potential for me freaking out over how chaotic our little house feels since we can't seem to figure out where everything goes.

Anyways, enough about that... on to our Arches adventure!

Double Arch, from a distance

I was hoping we could head out first thing in the morning, but, as usual, it was after lunch before we finally managed to make it out the door.  We have a National Parks Pass (which we actually bought at Arches on our visit there over Spring Break in March) so we flashed our card at the entrance and headed to the Visitor Center.

Double Arch, getting closer

While we were in the visitor's center, we watched the movie about Arches and I decided to buy one of the  National Park Passport books.  These books have a list of all the National Parks and you can collect stamps and stickers at each site you visit.  Ideally, having this book will get Lorelei interested in the various places we can go on our RV Adventure, but so far she hasn't touched it since we left Arches.
I convinced Lorelei to check out the Junior Ranger Program so we talked to a Ranger while we were at the Visitor Center but she really wasn't into it.  We were there in the middle of the day so it was too hot to do anything other than drive around and do a short hike.  Lorelei and I decided Double Arch would be a good one to check out and I don't think we did that one when we were there in March so it ended up being a great choice!

Lorelei was quite the monkey and scrambled all over and up into the Double Arch.  She was actually making me a bit nervous with her confidence, mainly because her shoes didn't have good traction and she would have seriously injured herself (or worse) if she slipped.  I had my camera bag and my cowboy hat so I was having a hard time keeping up with her.  Thank goodness we made it without any incidents.  Now we just need to find some comfortable hiking shoes for our monkey.

I'm not exactly sure what this formation is but we could see it from Double Arch.
I thought it kind of looked like 2 rock people kissing.

Lorelei, perched inside of one of the Double Arches

We both enjoyed the hike and Lorelei had a blast scrambling around under the Arch. Now I need to figure out how I can get her to do the Junior Ranger Program without twisting her arm.  I am planning on incorporating that into our road-school curriculum so at some point she's going to be forced to do it and I'm really not looking forward to that battle!

I think this is Turret Arch.
We could see it from across the way when we were hiking back to the parking lot.

This was after our hike.  A smile on Lorelei's face means it was a success!