Trip to Arches!

Christina and I decided to take advantage of the fact that I had Friday off. We took a trip down south to go camping and hiking at Arches National Park. Neither of us had been before.

Our first plan was to take a slight detour and visit the Manti Temple on the way down. Luckily, I remembered to look it up online before leaving, and we found out it was closed for maintenance. So, we decided to drive an extra hour past Moab to visit the Monticello Temple, in honor of the apartment complex where we met.

Monticello is a really small town. The temple was also really small. We were able to go through it (we brought a change of clothes).

We then drove back up to Moab to find our campsite. Christina and I are both used to camping in Washington where you get a big, secluded campsite the places we have both been to. This was not that way. You get a narrow strip of land. It was a lot of fun though. We roasted hot dogs (well, we had to share cause mine fell in the fire), marshmallows, and had s'mores. This picture is of me in the morning taking down the tent.

We then set off for Arches National Park, just two miles north of Moab. Here we are at the beginning of our journey, the trail to Landscape Arch.

Here is Landscape Arch. It looks like it's about to fall apart (a large section of it did break off in 1991).

Here we are right before getting lost on the trail to Double O Arch. Christina was proud of this picture because she used the timer on it.

We then visited several other smaller arches, including Tunnel Arch, Pine Tree Arch, Sand Dune Arch, and this one, Broken Arch (this one is actually pretty big).

After all of that we were so tired, we almost decided to skip the 3.0 mile round trip hike to the famous Delicate Arch. We're glad we decided to do it! It was much bigger than I imagined.

Much cooler than the St. Louis Arch (sorry Jason, but it's true).

Our last hike (it was a small hike of 0.4 miles total) was to the Double Arch.

Here are few more pictures for your enjoyment of us at Balanced Rock.

It was a very fun trip! We recommend checking out Arches National Park if you haven't already.