Summer Vacation Trip - Day 8

We got a later start than usual and took our time eating breakfast in the lobby of our hotel in Blanding.  We actually didn't hit the road until around 0800, when we headed north to Moab (the town right outside of Arches NP).  On the way, I decided we should look for a hotel so we could drop off all of our bags and avoid rushing back to town in the evening to find a place to stay.  We first stopped at the KOA Kampground but found their rooms would be VERY pricy.  Mollie checked the prices for other lodging in the area and discovered they were all pretty high.  Fortunately, we saw a place, Red Rock (AKA JR's Desert) Inn.  It was quaint hotel on the southern side of town with a sign that indicated it would be inexpensive.  After talking to the lady at the front desk, I decided that we should stay there - we got a bonus when she told me the room was cleaned and we could put our belongings inside immediately (0835).  We stored our bags and then Mollie called her mother.  After the call, she told me she was ready to go exploring.  First, though, she told me we needed to find a pharmacy (to get medicine for her cold).  This task required some exploration and Google Maps.  As we looked around town, Mollie told me she thought Moab was similar to Jackson Hole, WY.  We eventually found a place (Walker Drug) and Mollie was able to find what she wanted inside (1000).  We had originally decided that we wanted to roam around Arches for a bit, then move on to Canyonlands for a little while, and go back to Arches for a sunset hike to the Delicate Arch.  This plan was thwarted, however, when we drove to the Arches entrance gate and saw a massive line of cars trying to enter.  I immediately revised the plans and drove north on US-191 towards Canyonland.  I filled up on gas at Chevron near the Archview RV Campground & Resort (1030) and then we drove a short distance to the start of UT-313, which took us to the NP entrance.  After getting inside the park (the NPS Annual Pass has definitely paid for itself!), we stopped at the Sky Visitor Center and found that it was VERY crowded.  Parking was scarce but we managed to find a spot (much to the dismay of a Mustang driver who tried to slide right into a spot that we had been waiting for).  Mollie got a stamp for her NPS Passport and we got our first glimpse of the Shafer Canyon, which was just across the street.  Mollie was very interested in discovering all of the roads that tourists could take down into the canyon with their off-road vehicles and told me that she thought it was “crazy to think about seeing all of the natural monuments and canyons up close like that.”  We left the visitor center area and drove to the Mesa Arch, where we took a walk on a pretty nature trail.  The site provided a perfect frame for, as the name implies, the mesa below.  As we were walking to the overlook, we talked to a man about the logistics of slickrock bike riding, something of which we had absolutely no prior knowledge.  Mollie snapped a bunch of pictures and we walked a bit farther down the canyon rim before trekking back to our car.  We also made stops at the Green River, Buck Canyon, and Orange Cliffs overlooks before arriving at the incredible Grand View Point Overlook and Rim Trail.  Though the entire trail was a mile outbound (and another back), we only walked about a half mile.  The view was amazing nonetheless and Mollie took many, many photos.  I believe she truly understood the reasons why I had insisted in visiting the park.  We soon began driving back toward Moab and officially left the park at around 1330.  On the way back towards town, we stopped at a Dinosaur Park on the corner of US-191 and UT-313.  We were very hungry, so got lunch at Paleosafari's Café (1415M).  We took our time eating what Mollie described as a “delightful meal” and then drove back to town and decided to pick up some food for a picnic dinner (at the parking area of the Delicate Arch, later in the day).  Mollie had spotted a place called Sweet Cravings Bakery and Bistro, a modern little restaurant that had sandwiches and wraps, and we stopped there (1530).  As we were ordering, we started a conversation with the very friendly barista about the jobs that are available in Moab.  We left once our food was ready and headed to our next stop.  Our revised plan to go to Canyonlands NP first and pray that the crowds would die down in Arches proved to be a success.  There were almost no cars trying to go through the entrance booths and many cars were already leaving the park for the day.  We stopped at the Visitor Center (1550) to get a stamp for Mollie’s NPS Passport.  Mollie bought souvenirs for her sisters and we watched the informational park film.  Some of this was a stalling tactic avoid the worst of the desert heat (at this point in the day, it was about 96 degrees F).  A Ranger told Mollie that, "people like you that are from the East Coast tend to think that it's cooler because you aren't sweating, when in reality your sweat is just evaporating before you can notice it."  Heeding his advice, we filled up all of our water bottles and reservoirs (Mollie tallied up almost four liters between us).  We then drove further into the park to enjoy the many amazing locations and sights. Mollie told me she was “almost immediately awestruck by the miles of mesa and unique land formations."  She asked me to stop at almost every pullout we saw so that she could take photos.  We stopped at the Park Avenue, Courthouse Towers, and Petrified Dunes viewpoints, along with The Windows, the Double Arch, the Parade of Elephants, Skyline Arch and Tunnel Arch.  We took our time because we were waiting for the best time to start our hike out to the Delicate Arch.  Eventually, we reached the Wolfe Ranch parking lot, where access to the Upper Delicate Arch Viewpoint was possible.  We ate our food from Sweet Cravings quickly, eager to start our hike and avoid the large crowds.  Our choice of time was very deliberate because we knew that some of the more casual visitors that were in the park would leave to eat dinner in Moab and then return for the renowned sunset hike.  The temperature was dropping slowly, but surely, as was the sun, and we started our hike about three hours before last light (1745).  The trail wasn't completely empty but we were able to navigate away from the large groups and climb a large section of steep slickrock at our own pace.  After the first mile, Mollie told me she wasn’t feeling well.  The cold she had did not pair well with the intense heat and the steep climb.  I told he we could go back to the car but she was extremely motivated by the photos that she wanted to get at the end of the trail and kept going.  I made her chug a lot of water (more than she wanted).  Her mood was pretty low for most of the hike but I noticed that she didn’t seem to be as afraid of heights as she normally is.  After taking our time, we made it to Delicate Arch and, as we’d hoped, found that the view was spectacular.  There was a rather large group of people that had made themselves comfortable in the shade of nearby the boulders and Mollie joined them to recharge.  Meanwhile, I walked around all of the site and got some good selfies.  When I returned to talk to Mollie, however, she told me that she was having trouble getting photos because there was a constantly developing line of people that wanted their picture taken under the arch.  I pointed out that we were lucky to even be in the vicinity of the iconic views we were getting of the Delicate Arch and she agreed that it was a really amazing thing to just be there, photos or not.  Eventually, Mollie told me she’d satisfied her desire for pictures and had somewhat quenched her thirst.  We then began our trek back to the parking lot.  The return leg was definitely easier and Mollie quickly perked up.  However, I reminded her that she needed to keep drinking water, regardless.  I climbed up a steep embankment of rock and got a photo of the Delicate Arch within the outline of another (smaller) arch.  Mollie and I were definitely energized after such an amazing hike and were very glad to be getting done already, since there were MANY more people headed into the area.  After we made it back to the car (2015), we started back towards Moab.  In the first few minutes of the drive, I was startled to see that someone from Virginia was following me close on my bumper and I pulled over to let them pass.  It has been an inside joke between me and Mollie for several years that our vacation day is success whenever we don’t see anyone from home but we aren’t always (or even usually) so lucky.  Still, we had to agree that the day had been an amazing one (and it wasn’t over).  The sun was clearly starting to fade (sunset was 2047) as we drove out of the park and, as we passed some of the landmarks Mollie had photographed earlier in the day, she asked me to stop again so she could photograph them in a different light.  She was proud to be able to get a picture of the La Sal mountains in all of their purple-tinted glory.  At our last stop (Park Avenue) I stayed in the car while she took photos.  When she returned, she told me about a nice conversation she had with a lady from a town in Utah who was visiting the park with her grandchildren.  Mollie was a chatterbox by this point and she bragged about how she “got almost 21,000 steps and climbed a total of 50 floors” (according to her pedometer).  She added that “the exhaustion was well worth it because Arches is definitely in my top five favorite national parks now."  She actually talked a little about college (it was more in the context of a possible Gap Year but I’ll take it).  We reached the hotel by 2130 and Mollie enthusiastically wrote up the Facebook posts (also for her school related travel blog) for both parks today.  She commented that she was getting excited for our planned day in Colorado “for a Walmart and some more NPS passport stamps!”  We watched a bit of TV before bed (2245).