Hello all!

Our second full day in Moab is all about hiking, and all about avoiding the blazing heat! Arches National Park opens at 7AM, so we dragged our tired bodies out of bed to get everything ready to go and hit the park on time! When you do your hike early, you can be 10 to 20 degrees cooler, and we were hitting our most strenuous trail yet. We have our water packs, and the lunches already made, and hit the trail pretty hard.

The final destination is "Delicate Arch" which you may have seen on the old school Utah license plates - it is a 60 foot tall freestanding natural arch which is the main sight to see at this park. This was only a 3 mile hike total, but it was pretty technical, in terms of switchbacks and some pretty high elevation changes. There are some areas with absolutely no guard rails or anything on the side, and you have to step sideways just to let people from the other direction walk by. There is absolutely no shade, so you know what you are getting into.

Once we made that final turn, and you see the Delicate Arch you find it is worth the hike! It seems to defy all laws of gravity and has a sheer canyon drop right behind it, like it is standing all by itself. People of coruse want to take their digital photo's so a line naturally forms for families to get their perfect shot. One guy dressed up as "Where's Waldo" - with the hat and sweater and all, and people just freaked out and cheered for him! He was so funny. The other thing I enjoyed is how everyone in line are from different states, different countries, speaking different languages, but we all made friends and plans to take pictures for the people in front and behind us. It made me believe in humanity once again!

Heading down the trail, some of the kids wanted to go faster than others (I won't call anyone out) and I tried to keep up. I have to say I was wrecked most of the rest of the morning, with the heat and elevation, I was just exhausted! We were all pretty proud of ourselves, but once lunch time came around, we headed back to the condo to rest. Bottom line is that we had 10,000 steps by 10AM, and I ended up with over 17K steps, which is 6.4 miles according to my phone.

We made steak back at home, and headed in for one more view of Arches National Park, and some ice cream and shopping downtown. Another fabulous day in Utah, and tomorrow we have one more national park to conquer. We will hike, but not as long as today. I'll load pictures as I can.

Thanks for listening!