Moab!

In Moab now, evidently a popular time of the year as it is busy, busy.  We had a nice drive over from Capitol Reef.  We usually avoid the interstate unless we are just trying make miles, but we had to take it to get to Moab, even so, the views on I-70 were awesome.  Who says you can't see anything on the main highways?

What scenery!

Looking down Spotted Wolf Canyon
through the San Rafael Reef

Awesome!

We pulled into Portal RV Resort just north of town and just a bit south of the entrance to Arches National Park.  We had never been here before, but had heard glowing reports about the owner side of the park.  Portal is a combo, half regular campground, and half are huge lots that are owned or for sale.  So when the owner isn't here, they rent out the lots.  So it's kind of exclusive I guess, it is all landscaped, huge sites all concrete with patios, a separate pool and hot tub for the resort side.  It's nice, but a bit pricey, with lots of rules to protect the owners.  Would we come back here, I don't think so, we would probably stay back down at Spanish Trails where we usually stay, but it's a nice change.
After a great breakfast with Nancy and CT at the Moab diner with their super green chili, we took off into Arches to do a hike in Devil's Garden.  Wow, we couldn't even find a parking space, so we blew it off and went over to a 4wd trail in the park that we had done before, but first we hiked in to take a look at Skyline Arch.

Skyline Arch

It is about 10 miles of rough wash board dirt road to get to the trail, and things must have changed a lot since we were here last, because we couldn't or wouldn't even attempt the first obstacle.  Man it was gnarly!  We were afraid of wrecking our Jeep, guess we need a lifted up Wrangler to do this one.  So we turned around, checked out the Devil's Garden again, and found a parking space so off we went.  It was a very pleasant hike, you can make the hike as long as you want up to 7.3 miles one way, but it gets challenging and high past the Landscape Arch at about .7 miles.  It is, in our opinion, more delicate and beautiful than the famous Delicate Arch.  306 feet long and thin and spindly looking, in fact in 1991, with a bunch of hikers nearby, a huge chunk fell off the bottom making it even thinner!

Landscape Arch

The trail past the arch gets a little more challenging as I said, here are some folks on the hike ahead of us.

Straight up the slick rock

Nice views and small passages along the way.

We wanted to take a hike into Fiery Furnace, but found out it has to be ranger led, and they are booked up for weeks!  Too easy to get lost or hurt in all the tiny passages.  Looked pretty neat, even though you could only see a small portion of the area.

Fiery Furnace area

It was a good day.  Jan received my anniversary gift this afternoon, a little early, it's on Saturday, 39 years!  So she wants to play around with it and learn to use it tomorrow.  It's a new camera.  Thanks Sandy for all your help and input.  Then Nancy and CT made superb green chili cheeseburgers, with authentic Hatch green chilies, for dinner.  A very pleasant evening was had by all.