The National Park Road Trip - Arches

After saying goodbye to our Ohio friends in Salt Lake City, we drove southeast toward our first National Park on our list, Arches. It was a good four hour drive and got more desolate the farther we drove. When you run out of McDonald’s stops you know you’re in the middle of nowhere. Desolate or not as far as civilization goes, the scenery changed constantly but the closer we got to Moab, Utah, the more desert like it became.

Soon we were seeing the red, red cliffs of the Arches area. We were arriving at the right time of the afternoon to view the beautiful colors. The angle of the sun was making the sandstone appear more red than sandy brown.

The sign for the entrance to the Arches National Park went by and another for Moab appeared but before we reached the town, our GPS lady told us to turn onto a road that followed the Colorado River through a valley sheltered by towering red cliffs. I began to catch on to why our hotel/resort for the night was called the Red Cliff Inn. What we didn’t catch when we made the reservations was that it was almost halfway around the park from the entrance—a good twenty-five minute drive.

By the time we arrived, it was almost time to eat and we quickly made reservations for the restaurant. Our room was very nice with a small kitchenette and a private patio area with a view up the river and to several red cliffs. Picture perfect!

 Too tired to do much more than shower and go to dinner, we enjoyed our food on the porch of the restaurant and watched the sun play shadows on the red cliffs as it set. The evening was great but the night was spectacular. Bob made a trip to the car for something and called out for me to come and look. There were so many stars in the sky it was hard to pick out the constellations. Those cowboys knew what they were talking about when they pitched their sleeping gear under the stars and gazed up in awe. There wasn’t a lot of gazing for us. We were off to bed—not a sleeping bag. It would be an early wake up call to be able to catch the sunrise in the park in the morning.