6.01.2010

arches


Moab, UT- It only takes about 4 hours to get to Moab from Vail (how sweet is that?!) so Will, Dave and I took a quick trip to visit Arches National Park. We got really lucky and were able to find a campsite pretty quickly. Will, NOLS backpacker extraordinaire, managed to forget his tent so we all slept snugly in my 2-man (thanks Kentucky Deluxe!). It was a pretty warm and clear night so we got to stare up at the Big Dipper while we fell asleep.

We got up at 5am and miraculously were on the road to Arches by 5:15 (the beauty of car camping- just throw it in the car!). We got to Arches just as the sun was rising and managed to check out a few of the Panorama arches before the army of vest-clad photographers arrived at 8. We whipped out the camp stove and preped our breakfast burritos right there in the parking lot while watching a strange variety of people make their way to the arches (a family who spent 10mins putting on make-up before getting out of the car, a suped-up Jeep w/ infants in the back, German dude with leather jacket... ummm... it's the desert!).

After breakfast we did the Devils Garden loop (7.8mi hike) and saw another 5ish big arches, a few tiny ones and every type of desert scenery you can think of including: [insert pause for dramatic effect] the Dark Angel. The Dark Angel is by far the most inappropriately innuendo-named geological feature, trail, ski run, etc. I've ever heard of. We were thinking it'd be an arch that's a dark rust color and maybe the bases would resemble angel's wings... NOPE! Check out 'Dark Angel' below... ummm... yeah... Is it because the local community is so innocent they had no idea the giggles people would have?

We managed to scramble up to the top of an arch or two but overall the slick rock (and 90+degree temps) prevented us from getting overly adventurous. We finished up thirstier, hungrier (bag of chicken!) and much darker than we started. After sitting in the shade with a beer at Eddie McStiff's (their business card is basically a picture of the Dark Angel...) we headed back to Vail.





The Dark Angel...


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