It’s been a busy few days. I took another, more leisurely, trip into Arches on Tuesday to try to get another sunset shot (it was a dud) and got in some more motorcycle-boot hiking in the front country. One of the wild things about Arches, Canyonlands, and the Moab area in general is that, in stark contrast to all the red rock desert surrounding the town, the snow capped peaks of the La Sal Mountains are always looming off to the east. These mountains are a geologic island, cut off from the Wasatch Range to the north. There are a few forest roads that cut through the mountains but I doubt they would be clear this time of year.

I ended up camping at Devil’s Garden at the far end of the park and took some astronomy shots. Between the light pollution from Moab to the south, Interstate 70 to the north, the campfires in the campground (not to mention the smoke), and all of the airplanes going over it wasn’t as clear as I had hoped. As remote as this place can seem it’s all a reminder that there is still quite a bit of civilization nearby.

The sunset may have been a dud but the sunrise most certainly was not. I broke camp at 5am and by 6:30 had made the mile-long hike to Landscape Arch expecting some spectacular colors on the rock as the sun came up. The main event turned out to be the sunrise itself. Moonrise was only about an hour before sunrise so a thin crescent was just peeking above the rocks as I started my hike. With the sun close behind the horizon started to light up soon afterwards. As the 7:00 sunrise got closer the whole eastern sky was lit on fire. The arch was nice too.

After a jaunt back to town to get some breakfast and put in a few hours of work it was time to take the bike back out onto the trails west of town, this time on the southeast side of the Colorado River. Kane Creek is a small tributary of the Colorado that has carved a very broad valley. A switchbacking dirt road twists down into the valley near the junction with the Colorado and then meanders upstream near the creek, crossing back and forth through the water numerous times before climbing over a low ridge and connecting back to the main road south of Moab. Sadly I didn’t take any pictures of this as I was preoccupied with not repeatedly extracting the bike from the deep sand along the creek. I eventually turned back the way I came to escape from the sand before the sun went down.

As Wednesday draws to a close the work week is done and the work trip I had planned for Monday through Wednesday of next week has been postponed so now it’s time for a solid 7 days of fun. I’m sure I could spend another month here in Moab and never see the same thing twice but I think it’s time to move on. I was thinking about heading south to Monument Valley and then crossing Lake Powell via the ferry at Halls Crossing and then taking the Burr Trail up to Escalante but the ferry is shut down for the winter and there are no other convenient crossings in that area so in the morning thing I will just head straight to Escalante on the main road and then down to Hole in the Rock from there, maybe with a stop in Capitol Reef for the night.

Tags: Red Roamer, Arches National Park, Colorado Plateau, Hiking