Arches National Park
After packing up our tent (on the outskirts of Monument Valley, see post about it here), we stopped by the Navajo visitors center to sign their guest book, check out the wall paintings/murals and any historical information. (There was one plaque that listed all the movies filmed in Monument Valley/Navajo nation.) Today the Indian community was hosting a celebration day — a field day of sorts. We didn’t have time to stay and join in the fun, however, for we were headed to Arches National Park!
On the way, we stopped at Hole in the Rock, a 5000 square foot house….in the rock. We didn’t take a tour, but we briefly browsed the exterior, mostly just the junk sculptures. Cobalt also bought us ice cream because I’d been asking for some for a while (our running joke on the trip, haha).
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According to history, many, many dinosaur bones are found in Utah; so when seeing a sign for one, we visited a dinosaur museum in Blanching, UT. It was pretty cool for a little town! My favorite part was all the old movie posters that were related to dinosaur or “big foot” movies (like King Kong). Some of the posters were hand done like a scrapbook. Others were printed, others were sketched… In addition to the posters, Cobalt liked the wood carvings of dinosaurs, the artist’s own collection as we discovered! They were very detailed, smooth and just plain impressive!
On our way out of the museum we spoke to the manager and her daughter who were both working that day. From them we learned that Utah (or at least this park) rarely gets rain. So little this year, in fact, that there is a fear of the reservoir running out to provide the citizens next water year! While we walked to our car we said a little prayer for the town of Blanching. I can’t imagine having the fear of water! And never again will I complain about too much rain. I will instead pray that our rain would providentially be shared with cities, states and countries that suffer because of droughts.
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We reached Arches National Park around late afternoon, just like at Monument Valley the day before. We looked forward to seeing the sunset once again. What we had forgotten to do, however, was to get gas before entering the park. So to our dismay we had to leave when we were 3/4 of the way through it so that we wouldn’t run out of gas and become stuck in the park. We still got to see a couple of cool arches, though as the pictures illustrate.
Using the wifi at McDonald’s earlier that afternoon, we had found a cheap campsite on the outskirts of Arches called Lower Onion Creek (see picture above). Not wanting to drive the hour back into the park (after getting gas) so we could finish where we left off, we drove to our campsite instead (the campsite was also on the way to I-70E, the interstate we needed to take the next day). About 25 miles from the park, the campground took a while to get to because we had to drive slower than on an interstate.
The whole campground was desert wilderness, covered in red sand and very short green, yellow and brown shrubs. My favorite part was a small stream, shallow in most areas but deeper in some.
With plenty of daylight left we busied ourselves with setting up camp and making supper. I had a hankering for pasta, so after boiling water in a pot on the propane stove I cooked a box of angel hair and Alfredo sauce seasoning mix. Needing to finish the cheese sticks we’d packed in the cooler (but hadn’t been cold in days), I tore a few mozzarella in there for extra protein.
Cobalt set up the tent while I made supper. He did a good job! I was glad we had practiced assembling it before we left for our trip, that way we knew how it went together:)
The stars that night weren’t nearly as pretty as the night before because the sky was much cloudier; this made us sad because we were in a much more secluded place and were looking forward to star gazing once again.
We didn’t sleep as well that night either because the air was much hotter than we expected…maybe 78 or 80F (compared to the 65ishF yesterday). Also, being in the middle of nowheres was a little frightening to me at times even though it was actually nice to be alone for once.
The next morning showed our fatigue in the form of impatience with one another; but as soon as the camping supplies were put away and breakfast was eaten we got along nicely once more. Also, washing our hair in the cold stream that was in front of our site made us feel much better. Being only three inches deep or so we couldn’t actually bathe in the stream, but we didn’t mind. God had provided for us and we were thankful!
The rest of the day we drove to Boulder, CO to see my brother, Elliot…