Day 6: Arches National Park

We were up early again to catch the sunrise and hike while the temperature was bearable. We were one of the few people at the park again, and we decided to hike to Landscape Arch first. On the way there we ran into another doe that was right on the side of the trail. We just slowly crossed each others' paths and moved on.

The arch was beautiful, we got there right as the sunlight started to get bright, and the moon was starting to set on the horizon. After the few mile hike, we decided to hike to Sand Dune Arch. This turned out to be a wonderful idea.

The hike to the dune meandered between large sandstone rock walls. It was nice and cool, and the ground of the thin valley was covered in fine orange sand. We had the trail to ourselves, and took our time getting there.

The arch itself was hard to get a decent picture of because I don't own a wide angle lens, so the best I could do was a shot of the side of it.

We stuck around for a while just relaxing before heading back to the car. Just as we were leaving the trail two giant busloads of high school kids got dumped at the trailhead. Perfect timing! At that point we headed back to Moab, packed up our gear, and hit the road towards Rocky Mountain National Park. It was a rainy and traffic filled drive through the mountains. As we started to head north of Boulder, the thunderstorms finally passed to the northeast of us. It was right as the sun was setting, and the light caught the thunderhead perfectly.

It was dark by the time we finally made it in to Estes Park, and we stopped for a quick pizza before heading to our campsite in the park. It was a bit of an adventure setting up our tent in the dark, but we got it up nevertheless and crashed for the night - our bellies full of delicious hawaiian pizza. :)