U, C, a U A (part 4)

16-June-2008 - Monday:
At long last... another entry from the Utah, Colorado and Utah trip! (I'm sure you could hardly sleep...)

We woke up this morning, and went out to ride the Klondike Bluffs trail. The trail starts north of Moab, and heads east ending up in Arches National Park. Since bikes are illegal in the park (off road), the trail just ends kind of in the middle of nowhere at a fence, and there's a bike rack sitting there. Park your bike, and there's a short hike up to the Klondike Bluffs overlook.

Lynne and I with the Klondike Bluffs in the background.

One extremely cool thing about this trail is that on the edge of the trail at one point there are some dinosaur tracks. Yes, actual dinosaur tracks. There's six or seven (?) of them and they just sort of curve around and disappear into the rock on the side of the trail. Here's one of them with Lynne's foot for reference.

Dinosaur track! Three toes pointing the same direction as Lynne's foot.

It's pretty cool to think that a dinosaur had walked RIGHT THERE. What was he doing? Where was he going? What did he look like? Why do I keep calling it a he? Just some of the mysteries that we may never know the answers to...


17-June-2008 - Tuesday:
Temperatures remained ... well ... too dang hot, so we got up early again and went up to ride the world famous Slickrock trail. Pretty interesting stuff. Not a beginner trail, that's for sure. But there are some pretty fantastic views up there (just as there are all over the place in Moab and Utah in general, really).

Lynne riding Slickrock.

After the morning ride, we went and got some breakfast and decided to head up to Arches yet again. We did the semi-long hike up to Delicate Arch, and then when it seemed to be even hotter, we did the very short hike up to the viewpoint.

Lynne walking up the trail. There's a little arch (don't remember its name!) in the distance to her left. Delicate Arch is up around the wall to her right.

It wasn't that long a hike (I think three-something miles), but it was 95+ degrees F. And a lot of it was over rock. It just felt like we were out there baking... But as soon as we turned that final corner and got a look at Delicate Arch, it was worth it. (Well, *I* think so; I'd guess you'd have to ask Lynne if she thought so...!) So here it is:

That's Lynne in the center of the arch.

A little closer view with me under the arch this time.

Here are some stairs that are cut into the sandstone along the trail. It looked like someone came along with one of those mesh screens that they use to catch sandcrabs at the beach, and just carved out the steps one scoop at a time.

So, now that we're completely out of water, and it's still really HOT, we decided to do the short walk (less than a mile round trip) up to the Delicate Arch Viewpoint to see where we'd just been.

Lynne taking a picture of the arch.

Another picture. You can see a person up on the ridge. That's where we walked to get right up to it.

And then we got back in the car, turned up the A/C, and drove back into town to get some water and food. A fine vacation day...

Okay, only one or two more entries to go. It's only a couple of months later that I'm writing this... I'm not that late am I? Well, maybe so...