Utah: Arches

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.

Utah: Around Moab

April 11, 2021: A morning walk to Corona, Bowtie, and Pinto Arches in the mesas surrounding the Colorado River, southwest of Moab. I nearly get us stranded after losing our rental car keys on the trail, but a friendly stranger returns it to our windshield by the time we reach the trailhead.

April 15, 2021: A brief afternoon outing, in the space of an hour between passing desert thunderstorms, to the Fisher Towers north of Moab. On our way home, we attempt to stop at Red Cliff Lodge for soup and hot drinks, but the restaurant is closed. We spend a few minutes in lodge’s Western film museum before heading back to town for dinner.

April 16, 2021: A short morning hike on the Poison Spider Mesa, to Longbow Arch. We see centuries-old petroglyphs, fossilized dinosaur tracks, and beautiful red cactus flowers.

Utah: Canyonlands

April 10, 2021: After flying into Grand Junction, CO and making the fast drive west to Moab, Jane and I meet up with Lindsey, who has blazed her way from Baltimore by way of Salt Lake City. After dinner, we speed up to Dead Horse Point State Park, only catching the last bit of sunset on the canyon walls.

April 11, 2021: Jane and I return to Dead Horse Point for an early sunrise before returning home to have breakfast and meet up with Lindsey. After our morning at Corona Arch, we grab ice cream in town (big mistake…) and return to Canyonlands NP in the afternoon. Jane starts vomiting at the tail end of a short but very exposed, steep, and isolated hike to the False Kiva. Lindsey makes the final climb to the Kiva’s alcove (verdict: behind its current chain-link fence, the views aren’t worth the effort - an unfortunate result of vandalism at the archeological site), while I help Jane stagger back to the car. In typical Jane fashion, she insists that she feels fine while we watch her rapidly deteriorate on the ride back to town. She is in pretty rough shape by the time we reach the motel, but recovers with gradual fluid intake over the course of the night.

April 13, 2021: After a lovely day at Arches, we return to Canyonlands to see Mesa Arch and take a walk to Grand View Point. Back in town, we eat lunch at the same place we got ice cream two days earlier (why oh why?!). It’s my turn to be miserable, although my symptoms are a lot more vague and persistent than Jane’s food poisoning episode (indeed, I’m not fully myself until well after our return to Boston); Lindsey goes out to explore on her own.

April 16, 2021: In between Longbow Arch and Delicate Arch, we trek out to Canyonlands one final time, photographing the Green River Overlook and taking a brief walk to a pair of Anazasi granaries near Aztec Butte.