Day 9

Got up and did my washing and somehow managed to wash and dry and watch. Needless to say it has not worked since. Today our plans were to go and suss out most of the arches in Arches National Park. Well, what else would you expect to see. First we went to see Turret arch and north and south window. Then we crossed the road passed the parade of elephants (stopped for 10 minutes to point it out to Kati) then on to Double arch. It was absolutely huge. We then bundied up to Devils Garden for lunch. It was freezing, so I suppose it was the closest I have seen to a cold day in hell.

NEXT !!!. It was a hike up to Double O arch. Double O is two O shaped holes, a small one below a large one. On the way we passed Landscape arch, which has a span of some 97 meters. Passed yet another arch, Wall arch and continued up the path. We finally made it the Double O, quite a nice and interesting view. Passed some fairly interesting rock formations on the way. Allot of walking on slick rock.

Then we travelled to our final hike for the day. We were going to see the so called most popular arch, Delicate arch. We also timed it so we would see the sunset while we were up there. So it was and 1.5 mile hike up (up being appropriate word) to the arch. As it was a scattered cloudy kind of day walking up was spectacular. Seeing the scattered rays of the fading sun peering through the clouds into the valley that was tainted with the colours of fall. So we got up to the arch and sat around. Waiting for the sun to peek through the clouds. We waited a while and as the sun was about to got down behind the mountains, we were greeted with a most wonderful glow of the arch as the sun hit it. It was a colour and sight that no photo could catch or words could ever describe. Now the fun part, a 2.5 km hike/run back down in fading light. We got back down and guess what, it was dark. In the end we hiked for about 9 miles and were sort of all arched out.