This morning we went into The Arches National Park, just 4 miles south of the RV park that we are staying in. The sky was slightly overcast and the forecast was calling for isolated thunderstorms so rather than chance it with the bike, we chose to take the car instead.

Arches is spectacular! What else can I say? There was literally no place to look that wasn’t breathtaking and we were totally in awe with every turn. We took a couple of mile-long hikes to get up a little closer to some of the arches and towers created millions of years ago. It was pretty impressive to say the least. After 3 ½ hours of looking at incredible land formations we headed into Moab for some lunch and to find a camera store. My camera had some dirt on the inside that was showing up in my pictures as dots which until today, I thought were bugs on the windshield. It became obvious that it was dirt when the dots remained there when there was no windshield and I had thoroughly cleaned my lenses!

Lunch was great; The Eclectic Café offered plenty of vegetarian choices and it is conveniently located directly across the street from a great little camera store. The gent that looked after us cleaned the specks out of the inside of my camera and recommended a scenic drive where we would find plenty of photo ops. Well seeing as we had nothing else on our agenda we followed his advice and headed up the highway. Somehow we missed the turn he told us about and ended up about 12 miles past where he said it would be. Not to be discouraged we took another road heading in the direction he suggested. After a while it became apparent to us that it wasn’t heading up into the La Sal Mountains where we wanted to go and so we took another road in the right direction.

This new road was gravel but well maintained so we stayed on it even after it became a little less smooth and even after we drove through the little creek that crossed right over it! What the heck…we drive a Honda! Well a few miles later we finally reached the peak of Mt. Peale, a cool 12,721 feet up and a dead end!! Alas, now we had to trek back down. No problem! And the best thing of all was that we encountered one golden eagle and two red-tailed hawks either soaring or sitting, just waiting for us to come along and photograph them. We had an excellent day; seeing the Arches, getting lost and 4 wheeling in our 2 wheel drive Accord!!!