Last night the A/C was left running as the outside air remained around 30°C until after 11 PM, so there was no natural cooling of the trailer. It was a comfortable nights sleep with a wake up temperature inside of 22°C and outside 28°C.
Today’s trip was to the Arches National Park, about 7 miles up the road from us. Unfortunately our donated National Park pass expired at the end of May! Like all the National Parks we have visited, this one was well worth the price of admittance.
Again, as with many of the sights we have seen on this trip, it is best to let the camera do most of the talking.
We started off climbing up above the entrance area, and looking across the road, which was in a valley caused by a fault line, the earth split and separated along the fault and the land on the far side dropped about 270 ft lower than the land where we were.
We headed on around the park to an area known as Park Avenue
In this area were a couple of rocks that appeared to be balance on others
The few trees that there were in the area weren’t too healthy looking!
Below are some general views taken on the drive
Above is the first Arch we saw
Above is the Balanced Rock, the first shot from a distance, the second from underneath it!
While looking up I saw an aircraft, and decided to see how well the zoom worked!
No great detail, but enough to identify it as as a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737.
Our lunch views for today:
We headed further north into the park towards more arches, although there were a number of walking trails, most were 2 or more miles and with the temperature hovering around 37°C we decided not to attempt them.
We did however take a short walk to see both the Sand Dune Arch and the Broken Arch. the walk to the Sand Dune Arch was cool, both figuratively and physically, the temperature dropped noticeably as we walked through the gaps in the rocks.
Above is Sand Dune Arch, below is the Broken Arch on the far right, you can see the two supporting pillars, but no Arch. The arch to the left of it is showing signs of cracking at its crown.
Another short walk took us to the Delicate Arch.
The only wild life we saw in the area were a couple of lizards, but there were a few cactus (catcusses, cacti)?
As well as an assortment of flowers.
Also something that looked vaguely like a holly bush
Hot and tired we were at the end of the trail, so far we had not used the A/C in the truck, but as we would be heading non stop back to the park entrance we enjoyed its cool luxury!
Back in town, we broke down (us not the truck) and headed into a store that sold medicinal ice cream!!
Tomorrow is forecast to be hot again, but we will be visiting the Le Sal Mountain range and climbing up to around 10,000 ft where it should be cooler.
The Le Sal mountains with snow and an a towering cumulus cloud above them.