Thursday September 21st
I left the RV park very early, around 6am. It was the only place I stayed that I didn’t see in daylight when I arrived or when I left. I didn’t take the time to eat breakfast – my plan was to bring some granola bars along on the first hike. They were quite nourishing, and worked well for snacks while hiking a few times. My first destination was Arches National Park, and particularly the parking lot right at the end of the main park road, an area called Devil’s Garden, where there was a four hour hike visiting quite a number of arches.
Arches National Park had implemented timed entry bookings, where you had to specify an actual time window when you would go in, and only a certain number of them were released. A few parks were doing this. This made quite a decent difference to the parking – though some places were still full, it wasn’t as ridiculously overcrowded as some other parks. If you got into this park before 7am you didn’t have to book. I also wanted to make sure there was parking at the parking lot, so I aimed to get there by about 6.20, which would have meant leaving about 5.30am, but I still got to the end parking lot before 7, leaving around 6. I had tried to book a site in the campground that was right at the end of the park, by the trailhead, but all sites had sold out in seconds when bookings were opened some months before.
Leaving the RV park I went through the maze of streets again back to the main highway, retracing my steps a bit towards where I’d been, but then turning off just out of Moab. There didn’t seem to be anyone at the park gates at that hour, so I went straight through. There were quite a few other cars coming in, even at 6am. The road wound steeply up the side of a hill, then levelled out a bit after that. It slowly got light as I drove through the park, and when I arrived at the car park, there was still plenty of parking, and I packed my water, some granola bars and some fruit, and started on the hike.
The first arch, Landscape Arch, was only about 15 minutes walk in, and I arrived just as the sun was rising, which made for some good photos. The advice I’d read had been to take the trail clockwise, but I ended up mistakenly taking it anti-clockwise. It was called a primitive trail, and that was perhaps rather optimistic. I had taken the precaution of downloading the trail on the AllTrails app, so that I could follow along on the map to see where I was relative to the trail. Some parts of the trail were fairly easy to follow, but others involved scrambling up rock faces, with very little in the way of markings.
As hiked, I met a German couple who were stumped, they couldn’t find where the track went from where they were. Even with the app we struggled to find the trail. It turned out we needed to go up some bare rock, then do a hairpin bend on that rock, then head the other way, with no markers I could see to guide us. I don’t know how any of us would have found the track if not for the app. Going the other way would probably have been easier, perhaps that’s one reason they recommended going clockwise. We walked and talked for a while; it was nice to chat with them.
An hour of walking from Landscape Arch took me to Private Arch, on a bit of a spur track. Around here I met another family, who were very friendly, and we spoke for quite a while, and walked together for a while. It was so nice to chat with a few people on the trail. Everyone was friendly, and seemed not to be swearing or taking God’s name in vain.
While walking between the arches, there were sometimes great views over the surrounding area – not so much canyons here, as plains and hills in the distance, with interesting rock formations.
Off a bit of a walk from this arch was Dark Angel, which turned out to be a tall pillar of rock, but I thought it was another arch, and hiked close up to it. I could have just looked at it from a distance if I’d known it wasn’t an arch! Around there, going back to the main track, I got a bit lost, trying to take a short cut back to the main track. I ended up scrambling down some fairly steep rock faces, while looking at the GPS to work out how to get to the track. There were some quite large rock formations that made it hard to just make a beeline to where I needed to go.
From there it was on to Double-O Arch, which had two arches one above the other, and another half hour took me to a part of the track where there were two branches to see a couple more arches.
Partition Arch had one very large hole in a rock face, and a smaller one. There were quite a few people around by this time, and I couldn’t get a shot of the arches without someone in one of the holes, though I came close. Someone had decided to sit in one of the holes, which didn’t help!
Navajo Arch was amazing – it was huge, and you could get right under it, and walk either side. Back I went then to Landscape Arch where the loop had split off, and back to the parking lot around 11.30. I’d been about four and a half hours.
I’d started later and taken longer than my tentative schedule, so I didn’t do all the other hikes I had planned, which wasn’t unusual. I did the hike to Delicate Arch, which took about 50 minutes round trip. It involved hiking a fair way up a very large sloping area of bare rock, and the sun was quite warm by that time. Toward the end there was a narrow track that looked to be cut into the rock.
I got to the arch, and there was a group of school students there, but they left after a while and I had the arch to myself for a few minutes, which was great. It was an enormously high arch, and indeed it did look quite delicate for its size.
After having lunch nearby, it was getting time then to drive on to Colorado where I was to spend the night. On the way out of the park I stopped at a panorama point, and to see an interesting rock balanced on a pillar, then started in on the three hour drive. I made my way out of the park, back onto the highway, then out to I-70 again, which I would stay on for a couple of hours or more, driving at 80mph till the border, then 75mph in Colorado.
It was quite an experience driving the van along this part, which was quite open and also fairly desert-like, with some rock formations in places. What made it memorable was the gusty side wind, which was very strong, and would just suddenly hit the van, and make it feel like someone was shoving it. I couldn’t take my eyes off the road for a second, being prepared for a shove any time, to react and stay on the road. I was glad when that part was over! Thankfully the wind died down after an hour or so.
Once again I joined the Colorado River along the highway, then came into the town of Rifle, and turned off up into more lush looking territory as I went up the hill to the park, passing a reservoir along the way. I arrived at the campground at Rifle Falls State Park around 6pm. It was a rather anomalous campground: there were powered sites, but only a pit toilet, without even a washbasin. Thankfully the toilet didn’t smell bad, like some of the other pit toilets I’d been to. There were a few spots for RVs, not really much privacy, but it was a nice quiet place without many people.
The best thing about it was that a few minutes walk from where I was parked was a beautiful waterfall, with three prongs coming down, and a lot of water. There were paths going around it, and even into a recess behind one of the falls where you could go and see the falls from behind. There were a few shallow caves, and some nice views when I went up to the top of the falls. Apparently they had generated hydroelectric power from the river there at one stage, quite a long while ago. After having a good look around I made some dinner and settled in for the night – a much cooler one than the previous night!
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