Arches National Park

Phew - Sorry it took way too long to write again. Okay, so where were we? Ohh... Arches National Park.

Arches National Park Highlights

Nights without a shower: 2

Bathroom Quality: Wonderful, updated, nice and private bathrooms that were environmentally friendly (powered by solar panels)

The second day started with a nice, dry and hot morning walk around more arches. After about an hour or so, we decided to come back for lunch and continue to explore in the afternoon. You wouldn't think it would be so hot in the morning, but we were getting tired faster than expected. After lunch we went to visit a beautiful arch - on which we climbed up to it easily and I had a TERRIBLE experience getting down from it. Imagine trying to climb down 15 feet of rock that is so steep that you can barely see the rock beneath you.. you can see the ground (rock as well) that you are trying to climb down to. What didn't help was that my head was playing tricks on me... I felt like I was going to fall and crack my head open or break something. I was paralyzed. I even had an older man trying to help me by giving me tips on how to climb down. I was terrified, breathless and ready to lose it. Chris had to give me pointers on where to put my feet and one step at a time I reached the bottom. All of that fear was expressed through many many tears that fell once I felt safe on the ground. Phew! This is the view of the arch from far away.

Off we wen to another trail that lead to a mountain with very narrow passageway. It was awesome. The view of that arch was unbelievable... That night we had a nice dinner and went to check out that evenings ranger-lead program about the animals at Arches. We star gazed for a while that night too - we saw so many shooting stars, the international space station and what we thought was Saturn. The sky at Arches was by far the best for star gazing.

PS. The reason I put "nights" without a shower and not days is because even though we showered on Saturday morning, we hiked and got pretty sweaty - so that mornings shower was cancelled out by how gross we felt that night after hiking that day.

PSS. I put down shower quality because when you aren't taking showers, if you get stuck with gross bathrooms as well, it makes you feel even dirtier. This was something I can to appreciate quickly.