Oct 18

We left Fruita and were in Utah within 15 miles. The landscape changed almost instantly. As beautiful as everything has been on this trip, it seemed like a warm-up for Utah. The road we were driving on was fairly flat, but on both sides we had mountains and large mesas. We took the back road into Moab, Hwy 128, and ended up driving alongside the Colorado River in a very deep canyon with deep red, very sheer cliffs.

Our arrival was somewhat delayed due to a half marathon race. We pulled off to a Colorado River Recreation Area to wait for the road to open up again. What better opportunity to get our bikes out and go for a ride!!

We arrived in Moab and will make this our base for the next 7 days. We checked out the visitors center and the neat little town.

Oct 19

What an awesome day of hiking!! We drove into Arches National Park early in the morning, and were told that the road to Delicate Arch had been damaged by a flash flood last night. More on that later. We drove to the end of the park to Devil's Garden. On our 4.2 mile hike through Devil's Garden, we saw Landscape Arch, Partition Arch and the Double O Arch. Landscape Arch is over 300 yds across. The hike had some interesting challenges climbing over boulders and slickrock, and walking across the top of some fins which were about 10 feet wide with steep drops on both sides. Possibly the best hike we have ever done.

Now just past 2:30, we drove back to the road to Delicate Arch, one of the most crowded and photographed places in Utah. Earlier, the ranger had told us that "we've been told that we can't stop everybody", so we asked if they would let us in and they did. There were 3 cars in the parking lot, including ours. We hiked the uphill 3 mile hike and found only 6 other people on the entire trail. The hike was a continuous uphill with over half of it on a single rock formation. The last part of the hike was along a 6 ft ridge cut into the side of a cliff with a very steep drop on the side. To see Delicate Arch with no tourists was absolutely incredible. We took a welcome rest enjoying the serenity, beauty and wind at the Arch. Downhill was much easier!!!

We consider ourselves lucky to have been able to sneak in as they were removing huge amounts of sand that had been washed down to the parking lot from the canyon and the forecast for tonight is for severe thunderstorms.

The Jays won!!

Oct 20

The weather forecast was not particularly good so we drove to the north section of Canyonlands, called Island in the Sky, where we knew the hikes would be quite short. We walked a half mile to Mesa Arch, which is the Utah screensaver that most people are familiar with. We were surprised at how small the arch actually is.

Next we headed over to Upheaval Dome which is an area where Precambrian rock is showing in brilliant multi-colours. As we ventured towards the second lookout, we thought we heard thunder and as we were finally able to see eastbound, it was very threatening. We did our photography quickly and rushed back as fast as we could. We were surprised to see numerous people just starting out on the hike. We weren't in our truck more than 15 minutes when it started to pour. The rain makes walking on the slickrock extremely slippery and the red sand becomes very muddy. The rain pours over the rocks creating mini mudslides and waterfalls. On our way out visibility was reduced to a couple of hundred meters and as we left the park we thought we saw snow but soon realized that there had been hail the size of marbles which completely covered the road in one area.

We saw countless waterfalls that only existed as a result of today's rain and we also saw a number of rainbows. The southern canyons of Utah get less than 9 inches of rain a year and it seems like most of that has fallen in the last 3 days.

Unfortunately there was no rainbow for the Jays.

Oct 21

RAIN!! A good day to enjoy a book and catch up on things.

Oct 22

Our long anticipated hike into the Fiery Furnace started with a pep talk from Ranger Reynolds explaining how easy it is to get lost in the Fiery Furnace and how many rescues they've had to do. It was a great hike with lots of scrambling and working our way through tight spots, as well as over very large cracks. The hike was almost 4 hours as we passed by several arches all very simply named like walk through arch, crawl through arch, kissing turtles arch and skull arch.

Next we went hiking around some of the arches that we didn't get a chance to see in our first visit to the Arches National Park. We saw Double Arch, Turret Arch and the Window Arches from both the front and the back. On our primitive hike around the back of the Window Arches, we saw why they would call them "spectacles", as they looked like a pair of glasses.

Oct 23

We went to Dead Horse State Park. The park got its name from long ago, when ranchers would chase the wild horses up to this canyon. Since it was so narrow and surrounded by 2,000 ft cliffs, it became a natural corral. For some reason, they took the horses that they wanted and left the remaining ones to die.

We had a short hike then jumped on our bikes to do 11 km of single track mountain biking. We were able to do most of the ride on our bikes but had to get off and walk a few times. When we left the park, we headed to see the Grand View of Canyonlands which we had missed out on because of the very inclement weather.

While we were heading to the restaurant to watch the Jays game, we saw Phil and Sue walking down the street. They had just arrived in Moab.

Oct 24

We set out this morning to hike Negro Bill Canyon. This was a 4.5 mile out and back trip with a 247 foot natural bridge at the end. Most of the trail was along a constantly running stream and we could hear the sound of mini rapids throughout the hike. When we received the end of the canyon, the natural bridge, we watched 7 canyoneers rappel in freefall down this hundred foot drop.

We came back for a short rest and then headed out to Hwy 279 for a road bike ride into one of the neighbouring canyons. On our way we saw a number of people climbing straight up the sheer cliffs, using either a large crack in the rock or very slight indentations to go up about 80 ft. It was very fun to watch but didn't give us any ideas on a new sport.

We were very impressed with the courtesy we received while we were riding. ALL drivers moved right over and gave us at least 10 ft of clearance. Moab is not only an incredible sightseeing destination but also a mecca for mountain biking, hiking, moto-cross, 4x4 or ATV riding. On another note, we looked up at the highest mountains and see that they are snow capped.