June 27, 2003: Western Trip, Day 7
	June 25, 2003: Western Trip, Day 5
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It's Thursday now, and we'll be breaking camp, doing another hike here in Canyonlands, and then heading over to Arches National Park for a visit. We'll be staying somewhere in Moab, Utah, tonight and, at some point, getting my windshield fixed.

Our Canyonlands Campsite

At the left, you can see an aerial view of most of the Squaw Creek Campground, one of two campgrounds here in Canyonlands, and the one we stayed in last night. It wasn't far from the visitor center, and the campsites were close to some large rock formations. On the aerial view, I've marked the route in from the visitor center.

I've also marked the dirt road that lead to yesterday's trailhead at Elephant Hill, and also the route we walked to get to the trailhead for today's hike on the Peekaboo Trail.

This morning, before we break camp, we thought we would take a couple of pictures of our campsite.

The campsite was really a good one, with some trees to shade the tent. Rather than being out in the open, the back of the site was bordered by a rock wall, and so it felt very safe and enclosed. If you'll click on the thumbnails below, you can see the pictures that we took this morning here at the campsite:

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The Peekaboo Hike (Big Spring Loop)

For our hike this morning, we modified one of the hikes in the Canyonlands park brochure. The original hike was called the "Big Spring/Squaw Canyon Loop," but we decided to add on a trek through Lost Canyon as well. So we started out from the trailhead that was at the southwestern end of the campground, followed the markers for the Big Spring/Squaw Canyon Loop and then, when we got to the intersection where the return trail went through Squaw Canyon, instead headed on through Lost Canyon. From there, we could follow the markers that led back to the original trailhead.

This modification turned what was billed as a "strenuous" hike into one that was even more so, but since we had the time, and wanted to see as much as possible, we thought that taking ourselves to the point of total exhaustion would be worth it. We did, and it was.

This fun hike passed through spectacular scenery, and we went up one canyon and down the other. Hiking was fairly easy in the canyon bottoms, but to complete the loop we spent a lot of time climbing along what is called "slickrock," which is really just bare sandstone. The ridges that separated the canyons were made of this bare rock, and so we had to follow cairns that were left for us, since there was no worn pathway in the rock. Some of these segments were kind of steep (a particularly beautiful picture that shows you what I mean can be viewed here), and the cairns took us close to exposed dropoffs, but not so close as to make Fred or I really nervous. In the picture at right, you can see Fred on this slickrock, and at his feet you can see one of the many, many cairns that we followed this morning.

The hike began at the Squaw Flat Loop "A" Trailhead, at the Squaw Flat Campground. We could have done the hike either clockwise or counterclockwise; we chose to go "against the flow" and generally proceed in a counterclockwise direction around the borders of the three canyons.

We began in Big Spring Canyon (be sure you pick out Fred in this picture). As we crossed from canyon to canyon, we were usually on a saddle, or ridge, between them, and it was these ridges that were composed of the slickrock. It was also from these ridges that we got our best views of the classic Canyonlands scenery.

One reason I liked the hike was that some scrambling was required as we made our way up these rugged, desert canyons. Although vegetation grows in the sandy soil in the canyon bottoms, much of the hike is on barren slickrock. The hike was also a great introduction to the landscape of the Needles, connecting three canyons for a loop across varied terrain.

Other than the scenery, there were some interesting features along the hike we made. One was the couple of painted figures that we found on rocks along the way. You can have a look at them by clicking on the thumbnails at left. Whether they were actual ancient petroglyphs or just more recent graffiti, we couldn't tell. Another interesting feature was when we came across some old tables and equipment that were sitting underneath a large rock overhang. Some of it looked like prospecting equipment, and some of it looked like equipment that might have been used by ranch hands. We never found a good explanation of what it was. And then there were the two ladders that were in place where we had to climb up the slickrock. Finally, and most unusual it seemed to me, was the spring‑fed pool that we found near the Squaw Canyon/Lost Canyon trail intersection. The guide we had said that the water was reliable, but not drinkable safely unless purified. We'd brought our own, though, so I wasn't tempted to try it.

Click on the Image Above to View the Slideshow

All in all the hike we made that involved all three canyons took us about four hours- less than the hike yesterday. But we were usually walking at a pretty good clip, and the length of the hike was a few miles shorter than yesterday. The big payoff on the hike were the views of the Canyonlands, and we never really tired of them (although we were a bit parched along the last mile or so of the hike as it wound across flat, sandy terrain back to the trailhead). It was a great hike, and a great way to begin the day.

Of course we took a great many pictures- about as many along the first half of our hike as along the second half, and I have taken these pictures and put them into the slideshow at right.

To view the slideshow, just click on the image at right and I will open the slideshow in a new window. In the slideshow, you can use the little arrows in the lower corners of each image to move from one to the next, and the index numbers in the upper left of each image will tell you where you are in the series. When you are finished looking at the pictures, just close the popup window.

I thought about trying to key them to an aerial view or a map, but doing so wouldn't add to the beauty of Canyonlands. So just go through the slideshow and walk through the Canyonlands with us.

When we returned to the car, we were tired and thirsty, but we were extremely satisfied with ourselves for trying to see as much as we possibly could. It would be nice, though, to sit in an air-conditioned car for a while on our way to Arches National Park.

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Wilson Arch, Utah

From Canyonlands National Park we are going to head over (or up) to Arches National Park. On the way, we are going to stop along US Highway 191 to have a look at Wilson's Arch.

To get there, we got back in the car at the trailhead, and headed back out of Canyonlands the way we'd come- along Utah Highway 211. This took us back by Newspaper Rock and back out to US 191 just north of Monticello. Then we turned north on that highway.

The highway winds through some pretty stark landscape, but the land has its own beauty. One noteworthy vista was this black mesa. It displayed the same columnar structure that we'd seen before in the West and which most people associate with formations like Devil's Tower in Wyoming. This rock looked blackened, as if there'd been a fire, but the color was entirely natural. It was starkly beautiful.

The turnoff for Wilson's Arch was about twenty miles up the road.

Wilson Arch, also known as Wilson's Arch, is a natural sandstone arch in southeastern Utah along U.S. Route 191 located 24 miles south of Moab. It has a span of 91 feet and height of 46 feet. It is visible from the road to the east where there are turnouts with interpretive signs. The elevation of Wilson Arch is about 6150 ft.

According to the sign at the pulloff near the arch:

"Wilson Arch was named after Joe Wilson, a local pioneer who had a cabin nearby in Dry Valley. This formation is known as Entrada Sandstone. Over time superficial cracks, joints, and folds of these layers were saturated with water. Ice formed in the fissures, melted under extreme desert heat, and winds cleaned out the loose particles. A series of free-standing fins remained. Wind and water attacked these fins until, in some, cementing material gave way and chunks of rock tumbled out. Many damaged fins collapsed like the one to the right of Wilson Arch. Others, with the right degree of hardness survived despite their missing middles like Wilson Arch."

We got out of the car and walked up underneath the arch, marveling at the graceful pedestal that was supporting it. It was hard to imagine the forces that create such a wonder. From up underneath the arch itself we could look back down the hill and see a long stretch of US Highway 191 leading north to Moab. We hung out at the arch for a while before getting back in the car and continuing north towards Moab and Arches National Park.

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An Afternoon Visit to Arches National Park

Getting to Arches National Park

Getting from Wilson's Arch to Arches National Park was simplicity itself. All we had to do was drive up Highway 191 until we saw the park entrance. We did make a stop in Moab to do two things.

First, we secured a hotel room for the night at the local motel whose name I have since forgotten. It wasn't a chain, but it was a nice place and they ended up giving us a great recommendation for dinner.

The other thing was that I stopped by the local Safelite Auto Glass office to find that it would be best if I brought the car in first thing in the morning to minimize wait time for a windshield repair, and so that is what we planned to do.

Then we drove up to the entrance to Arches National Park.

The History of Arches National Park

Rocks have attracted visitors to Arches National Park for thousands of years (and we, ourselves, have been here once before). Hunter-gatherers migrated into the area about 10,000 years ago and found quartz rock perfect for making stone tools. Chipping or knapping these rocks into dart points, knives, and scrapers, they created debris piles that are still visible to the trained eye. Roughly two thousand years ago, the nomadic hunters and gatherers began cultivating certain plants and settled into the Four Corners region, living in villages like those preserved at Mesa Verde National Park. While no dwellings have been found in Arches, there are rock inscription panels. Both the Fremont and the ancestral Puebloans left the region about 700 years ago. As those peoples were leaving, nomadic Shoshonean peoples such as the Ute and Paiute entered the area and were here to meet the first Europeans in 1776.

The first Europeans to explore the Southwest were Spaniards. As Spain’s New World empire expanded, they searched for travel routes across the deserts to their California missions. In fact, the Old Spanish Trail linking Santa Fe and Los Angeles ran along where Highway 191 is today. The first reliable date within Arches was left in a chiseled inscription by Denis Julien, a French-American trapper with a habit of chiseling his name and the date onto rocks throughout the Southwest. His inscription here is dated June 9, 1844.

The first European settlement of Southern Utah arose from the colonizing efforts of the Mormon Church. When conflicts with the Indians ended, Moab was settled permanently in the 1890s by ranchers, prospectors, and farmers. One settler, John Wesley Wolfe, a veteran of the Civil War, built the homestead known as Wolfe Ranch around 1898, seeking good fortune in the newly established State of Utah. It is located in what is now Arches National Park on Salt Wash, at the beginning of the Delicate Arch Trail. Wolfe and his family lived there a decade or more, then moved back to Ohio. Their cabin remains.

One of the earliest settlers to describe the beauty of the red rock country around Arches was Loren “Bish” Taylor, who took over the Moab newspaper in 1911 when he was eighteen years old. Bish editorialized for years about the marvels of Moab, and loved exploring and describing the rock wonderland just north of the frontier town with his friend, John “Doc” Williams, Moab’s first doctor.

Word spread. Alexander Ringhoffer, a prospector, wrote the Rio Grande Western Railroad in 1923 in an effort to publicize the area and gain support for creating a national park. Ringhoffer led railroad executives interested in attracting more rail passengers into the formations; they were impressed, and the campaign began. The government sent research teams to investigate and gather evidence.

On April 12, 1929 President Herbert Hoover signed the legislation creating Arches National Monument, to protect the arches, spires, balanced rocks, and other sandstone formations. On November 12, 1971 congress changed the status of Arches to a National Park, recognizing over 10,000 years of cultural history that flourished in this now famous landscape of sandstone arches and canyons.

Arches, along with other of the "crown jewel" parks, is exquisitely beautiful, and it well-deserved a second visit from us. The first time we were here, we spent a full day in the park; this time, we'll spend this afternoon and also the first part of tomorrow here. For this afternoon, we will stop at a few of the formations we missed the first time we visited, and tomorrow we will visit some more of them.

A Map of Arches National Park

Arches National Park is a long ways from being one of the larger parks in the United States. At just over 75,000 acres, its size pales in comparison with parks like Wrangell-St. Elias National Park in Alaska at over 8 million acres. (Actually, the largest of the national parks are all in Alaska; the largest national park not in that state is Death Valley National Park at just over 3.3 million acres. But the size of Arches is more in line with parks such as Zion (146,000 acres), Mesa Verde (52,000 acres) or Bryce Canyon (35,000 acres).

Like most of the national parks, the parts of Arches that are most often visited occupy a small fraction of the total park area; most of the park is relatively unexplored by even the serious park visitor. The same was true of Canyonlands; most visitors just drive the short park roads or perhaps take short hikes from the campground. We probably did more hiking there than 99% of the people who visit.

But so you can get an idea of the lay of the land here at Arches National Park, I've made a copy of the park map and put it in a scrollable window below. You can use that map to follow us on our visits to some of the famous landmarks here; you will see that almost all of them are right on the main park road (although some require a healthy hike from that road to get to).

I'll just organize our visit around the main arches or pedestals we stopped at, today and tomorrow, giving each its own little section here. If you will scroll the map towards the bottom, you'll see the two features that we are going to visit this afternoon- the Windows (North and South, part of the same formation) and the Double Arch.

The North and South Windows

When we were here years ago, there were some formations we didn't have a chance to visit, and the Windows formation was one of them. (Perhaps this is because Microsoft had not licensed the use of the term.) So this afternoon, this will be the first formation we visit.

The Windows is a double formation; there are actually two separate arches here, although from certain angles it looks as if the two arches form a pair of eyeglasses, as it looks as if both arches share the middle pedestal. This is just an optical illusion from certain angles, though.

There was a short trail that led up to the Windows from the nearby parking area, and we were able to get right up to them. Below are some thumbnails for views of the separate arches and their outward bases; click on them to view:

Double Arch

The second formation we'll visit this afternoon is called Double Arch.

From the parking area there is a short trail (about a quarter mile long) that leads down to Double Arch, which looks like part of a gyroscope embedded into a sandstone cliff. The trail passes directly beneath the bigger of the two arches, a monumental 112-foot tall, 144-foot wide span, which is the tallest in the park and the third widest.

Fred took a short movie here at Double Arch, and you can have a look at it using the player at left.

We went up the rock amphitheater behind the first arch up to the adjoining span, a smaller 67-foot wide and 86-foot tall arch. Geologists believe this impressive span began as a pothole of water on the surface overhead. The collected water slowly broke down the rock, forming an alcove, which eventually created both arches. Science aside, the twin arches seem like an improbably natural wonder, created solely to amaze. The inspiring configuration went by a few other names over the years, like Double Windows, Jug Handles, and Twinbow Bridge. Whatever anyone else calls Double Arch, I call it impressive. If you visit Arches, don't miss this short hike!

That was all we really had time for this afternoon, but we will be back tomorrow.

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Staying in Moab, Utah

When we left Arches National Park at dusk, we drove back down into Moab to the Moab Valley Inn. It was a really nice place, and we got a recommendation for a local restaurant that also turned out to be quite good.

Then, tuckered out from hiking this morning and this afternoon, we hit the sack.

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	June 27, 2003: Western Trip, Day 7
	June 25, 2003: Western Trip, Day 5
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