We finally made it to Moab!
We got here Monday afternoon, and were greeted by 103 degrees and a windstorm that covered the truck and camper in a fine layer of red dust. Because of that, we just hung out and decided to leave SUPER early the next morning to go to Arches.
By SUPER early, I mean SUPER EARLY. We left the camper at 3:30am to get to the Delicate Arch Trailhead for sunrise, and we were the first ones there. Literally… greeted by an empty parking lot. By the time we actually started hiking a few more cars had arrived, and since I’m a fat f**k and not at all physically fit, they all caught up and passed us pretty quickly. So we didn’t get to say we were the first ones to the top, but whatever. We still win.
Next we found a comfy spot to watch the sunrise.
Once we were done there, we headed back down to the truck to head over to Devil’s Garden for our day hike. It’s about 3 mile roundtrip to Delicate Arch, and the loop around Devil’s Garden is 7.8 miles when you do all the sidetracks to see the various arches. Oh, and it was going to be 100 degrees by 11am. So we had our work cut out for us.
This is the part where I should continue walking you through our hike and describing all the pictures, but honestly I don’t even remember what’s what. It was four hours of me and Jenny going, “holy s**t that’s f**king amazing!” and then getting out my phone to take a picture. Just make a mental image of us wandering around a desert, wildly flailing the camera around and screaming some arch’s name. Maybe a slight exaggeration, but not completely inaccurate. And I can say these are in chronological order, but past that, it’s just a dump of everything past 7am. Enjoy looking at my dump. Ya sickos.
The last two hours of the hike are pretty light on photos because by that point it was getting past 11am and the heat was starting to get to us. We did pretty well staying hydrated, but four hours in the sun and 100 degree heat started taking its toll for sure.
When we got back to the truck we assessed the damage… my knees and ankles were toast, and Jenny had some heat rash around her ankles, but other than that… we survived! Obviously we drove home and passed THE F**K out. Eventually made ourselves grab dinner, beer, and gelato at Moab Brewery and called it a day.
Tomorrow we’re doing some lower key hikes at Canyonlands, and possibly stargazing and comet tracking at Dead Horse Point State Park, another dark sky site. Then Friday morning we leave for even hotter and more middle of nowhere Utah because… we crazy.