Arches, day two

Dave, the tour guide at this point of our trip, had a couple choices for us on Sunday. His preference – a 6 mile round-trip hike to Horseshoe Canyon, the place where the 127 Hours guy was headed when he got stuck.Six miles seemed like way too much for the kids. I definitely did not want to scare the kids off of hiking so early in our trip. Since we had gotten a late start because of church and a stop at the grocery store, we decided against that trek instead favoring a hike to Landscape Arch and possibly Double O Arch. Landscape Arch had a big chunk fall off in 1991, a reminder that this landscape is changing all the time. We made it there easily. It is a large arch and neat to see the place where the broken piece had fallen off.

We set off on the second half of the hike. This was labeled difficult hiking. We reached a pretty steep ridge of rocks that we needed to climb up. I almost balked because it seemed too scary. But, Dave checked it out and said that it would be OK. We carefully climbed it, and fortunately, it got a little easier after this – for awhile. You totally can't appreciate it here, but you can see the people up on the top behind Dave.

We reached this ridge with sharp cliffs on both sides. We were supposed to cross this. There was no way. Then, add to this that the wind was gusting pretty hard. I had trouble keeping my feet when I was up on the ledge. So, I decided that there was no way. Matthew was cold and afraid of the wind, so he was definitely out. Rachel, Alex and Zack all wanted to go with Dave. But, I did not feel comfortable with him taking 3. I actually had to play the, “I will not forgive you if one of them dies” card. I was completely freaked by this and wanted Dave to know how much against this I was. I could hardly breathe. Rachel ended up offering Zack $1 to stay with me because she could tell that that was the only way she would be able to go.

Hiding from the wind in these little caves.

People walking on the ridge I was talking about.  I forgot to take a picture of Dave walking with Alex and Rachel.  You can't appreciate how dangerous that was from here, but there were steep cliffs on each side with strong wind gusts. 

Zack, Matthew and I headed to check out a couple of other arches they had up there. Apparently, the Double O Arch was awesome and the kids were so excited about doing something dangerous. They loved it! Dave said the trail would have been fine without the wind, but that it was scary with the wind. The other arches up there were Navajo Arch and Partition Arch. Zack and Matthew were having great fun climbing on the rocks and playing in the crevices near Navajo Arch.

 Partition Arch was a little scary. There was this little window that the kids climbed up to. It really looks like the kids could fall off over the edge. Of course, it was making me nervous, but it wasn’t that bad. It was definitely a little scary and the kids could have fallen, but I let them climb up there.

Here you can see the other side of the window.  It is the small window up there to the left.  Notice that this side is pretty steep. 


Along the way here, Zack earned his new nickname, “Slash”.

On the way down, we had a contest to balance a rock on our heads as we hiked down. After quite a ways, Alex beat us all. In the end, we hiked over 5 miles along that route. But, it was definitely an experience and everyone remained very happy

We had planned a trip to Goblin Valley State Park for afterwards, but I talked Dave into an early night to get some laundry done. We stayed in Green River (a teeny town along the interstate), but they had a nice Laundromat next to a car wash. So, we got the car and the clothes cleaned. Then, we got the kids bathed and in bed. Whew!