After over a year without travels further afield, Jane and I emerge from the pandemic (fully vaccinated) with a trip to Southeast Utah, joined by my old co-fellow Lindsey for a week-long photography and sightseeing tour around the slickrock canyons and sagebrush desert surrounding Moab Valley. A far cry from our road-tripping and globe-trotting vacations of yore, we wind up having a fairly mellow week based out of the Motel 6 north of town - in part due to a mysterious foodborne ailment that besets Jane and subsequently me. Despite feeling quite out-of-sorts, we manage to get out for a variety of day- and half-day excursions, exploring a variety of beautiful landscapes around Arches National Park, Canyonlands National Park, and their vicinity. Given how varied our week’s pace was, rather than presenting the photos from this week chronologically, I’m choosing to group them into three geographic regions: one for each of the two national parks, and another for several hikes we did around the outskirts of Moab, along the banks of the Colorado River. They are presented here without additional commentary:
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April 12, 2021: Our first foray into Arches NP. A full morning of scrambling up and down cliffs, fins, and rock faces in the Devil’s Garden, and some memorable selfies with… well, sandstone arches. We grab a Mediterranean lunch to-go in town, and return to the park in the late afternoon for several more arches (Sand Dune, Broken, and Skyline) and a fantastic sunset in the Garden of Eden / Windows area.
April 14, 2021: Some short outings into the park, in between waves of malaise and nausea (for me). Jane and I visit Double Arch in the morning and return to Park Avenue and the Courthouse Wash area to photograph alpenglow on the La Sal Mountains.
April 16, 2021: The last day of our trip; Lindsey, Jane, and I take a hike up to our last arch (Delicate Arch) in the late afternoon and take one last panorama (above) from the roadside as we drive home at sunset.
