Like Zion National Park, I also have a billion pictures from Arches! Here is just a sampling of them.
They had some fun bronze animal sculptures. Here's Patrick riding a goat.
Sadly, we did not see a grasshopper mouse, but we still think the animal is awesome.
The rock formations were indescribably incredible. It's crazy to imagine that all this has been shaped by the gentle forces of wind and water!
This area is called the Fiery Furnace, because the formations look like flames leaping from the ground.
You can see Landscape Arch in the left of this picture. Better pictures are coming up.
On our hike to the Landscape Arch, we saw a lizard!
The cactuses were cool.
There's an arch above my head, if you look carefully!
Here are some better pictures of Landscape Arch:
This area was beautiful, with lots of plant life among the red rocks.
At every angle of this park, there was something incredible to see.
We only had time to do the short hike to Landscape Arch, but most of the other arches and formations are visible from the road winding through the park.
Here is Balanced Rock:
Given more time, I would have spent more time in this area (the "Windows" area of the park). Some of those arches you can walk up under.
The drive from Arches to Denver cut through several national forests, with steep slopes, beautiful trees, and a pretty river by much of the drive. Unfortunately, we were too busy enjoying the scenery to take many pictures, and even the pictures we took don't begin to capture the beauty of what we experienced.
This portion of the drive was honestly the first portion of our trip back home that I would consider beautiful. Driving through Utah was absolutely incredible and pretty in its own way, but the mountains, trees, and rivers were truly beautiful. Maybe it's because that's what we grew up with.
We arrived in Denver around 9pm and it was pouring down rain! On the recommendation of my boss in California, Dr. Krum (who had lived in Denver some time ago) we tried out a restaurant called Le Central. We were both very hungry so we ordered mussels as an appetizer, and then Patrick ordered duck, and I ordered trout. It was SO delicious. By the time we finished the mussels and fries we were already full! I'm not too enthusiastic about shellfish but I really enjoyed the mussels. The fries were some of the best I've ever had as well--perfectly crispy. We took most of our duck/trout dinner with us in takeout boxes and then enjoyed it for dinner tonight.
We slept in and decided to just spend a little time in Denver then get on the road. It sounds dumb, but we went to the REI store there, which has its own rock climbing wall and bicycle test path! It was neat to look at all the outdoors equipment. There was also a park surrounding it that was cute.
Since Dr. Krum had not led us astray for dinner, we also took his recommendation for lunch and went to Zaidy's to order the pastrami latke sandwich. It was gigantic and delicious. (Thanks Dr. Krum, if you're reading!)
We then drove from Denver to Kansas, which was mundane. This is what it looked like most of the time:
We were very disappointed to miss the world's largest prairie dog and the five legged cow that the signs told us about for 40 miles. Unfortunately it was closed by the time we got there.
We found a "Tillman" replica in the middle of Kansas:
Tomorrow we head to St. Louis to meet up with friends! We're excited to be headed back into civilization. Three more days until we're home!
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