Exploration

Taking everyone's advice, I decided to see a little bit of the area this weekend instead of saying at Crow Canyon and watching the leaves blow in the wind. After the snow that we had three days ago, the weather cleared up and was a wonderful 70 degrees or so with a nice wind, making it perfect weather to explore in.

Saturday morning started with me moving from Hogan 10, my home for the past three weeks, to Hogan 5, my home for the next two weeks (then it's on to the Intern Cabins with me). Apparently, you can't have sixth graders off by themselves (all of 10 meters from the other cabins), so they had me move up to the cabin on the hill and allowed the kids to take over my nice centrally located cabin. But hey, it means electricity for another few weeks....I guess I can't complain that much.

Next on Saturday's agenda, fixing the flat tire I acquired about two weeks ago (don't worry I wasn't driving on it flat...I filled it with air everytime I went somewhere :~) A stupid nail caused a slow leak to form. It's the same tire that I've had to fix three times previous so I'm beginning to think that it's cursed. Let's see how long this patch last.





Finally, I made it out to Sand Canyon National Monument, which is actually very close to Crow Canyon (they excavated it a few years back). I was a little disappointed with the site as I thought that a lot of the ruins would still be intact and you would be able to differentiate where the different roomblocks, towers, and kivas, etc. where once situated. Instead, it looks like the dump yard for sandstone bricks. None of the buildings are very recognizable and I wonder how the archaeologists came out there and were able to determine what was there. Even without clear ruins, it was a beautiful area (wooded with a great cliff view at the end) and I spent sometime wandering around and sketching a bit.

Saturday gave way to Sunday and...

My new sunglasses (gotta love Walmart in a town with nothing else)...



Myself...



and Mark, one of the maintenance people at Crow Canyon, set out for Arches National Monument in Utah. Think Red Rock park in Vegas, meets the Painted Desert in Arizona (or is it New Mexico?)...it's gorgeous.

We hiked through "Park Avenue"




past the "Three Gossips"



to the "Court House" (picture didn't take sorry) and then walked back up the road like idiots (idoits for Amy and Ezra) thinking that it was a faster route back (turns out it's about twice as long...oh well). The rest of the day when we saw someone walking on the road we'd say, "Look at those idiots....what are they doing?"

After this nice little hike, we continued on our trek a bit and drove around the little loop that passes a few of the other main outlooks. We took a side detour to see "Delicate Arch."



Eventually we came to the end of the road, "The Devil's Garden." What a great name. I'm not sure what it was referring to though since nothing on the mile trek in looked remotely sinister. I assume someone was just having fun when they decided on the name of the location. There were a couple of really neat looking arches at the end of the short hike. There was an Elder Hostel group that was at the park and they were hiking in with us. It was cool to see this 70 or 80 year old man taking his time climbing the hill to see the arches. I was thinking that I hope that I'm in good enough shape to do that when I'm his age. Props to him and the other Elder hikers.




The last stop of the day was to "Double Arch." We actually climbed into the window area of this arch which is really two that was fused together. It's quite spectacular.




I would have had a few more pictures to post, but it seems that my dying camera battery decided to not actually take the pictures and store them. Somewhere in the process about 10 pictures disappeared...guess I'll have to go back sometime and retake them.

Hope you all enjoyed your little vicarious visit to Arches National Park...please come again.