Blowout

 In our last day of vacation, we had the deluxe private 4x4 tour of both Canyonland NP and Arches NP.  What ended in a blowout started with a bang. 

We enjoyed our hotel breakfast, with fresh waffles and fruit. 

Our 4x4 was waiting for us curbside at the hotel, promptly at 9am. Kevin Walker (our guide) started off strong, narrating our 9-hour adventure. 

Carmen actually read in the car today without getting motion sickness. It was a stellar feat, given the off-road adventure we were on. 

We passed by the main entrance to Arches NP, looking at the sizable line of stationary cars waiting to get in the park. The park has advanced purchase timed entry tickets for visitors, strictly limiting the number, tickets which we neither had nor needed.  Kevin was taking us in the back door. Apparently the back door did not have an entrance station. He said we would understand why soon. 

After turning into an unmarked open gate onto a non-descript back dirt road, we passed BLM land and a state park where people live without water or sewer. A ways further, we arrived at dinosaur tracks. They were everywhere, but the park had uncovered only a fraction. Everywhere they dig, they find tracks, and they’re not all from the same period. 

Jane looking at carnivore dinosaur tracks

Carmen looking at herbivore dinosaur tracks. 

After the dinosaur tracks, we quickly figured out how they keep out all of the Priuses and trucks that don’t belong. All wheels and high clearance were required to pass into the park, the driving was impressive. I knew things were getting serious when Kevin stopped the car to slip on a pair of thick, dusty, well-worn driving gloves. Our first stop was the Whale’s Eye arch. It took some serious off-road adventuring to get to this site, that we were told only 1% to 2% of park visitors get to see. 

Whale’s eye was a huge treat, and we had it all to ourselves in an otherwise at-capacity park.  The girls scrambled up all sorts of formations. Kevin was really impressed with this duo, and he scrambled with them to show how to get up some particularly steep terrain.  They saw this formation from every angle and were disappointed about having to leave. 

Scrambling up slopes 

In the eye of the whale

They wanted to climb everything they saw

So they did

This was incredibly difficult to scale. So Kevin climbed it to show them how. They wanted to see in that cave. 

Closer to the eye

After leaving the whale’s eye, we drove toward the mainstream sights of the park on paved roads. Kevin took us to both the famous and less famous formations, but he made accessing them simple, avoiding crowds. Because of that, we had plenty of time to see all of the main areas of Arches. 

Everybody loved Skyline Arch, but not for reasons you’d expect. 

I dropped my chapstick, and it rolled off the Cliff. Jane and Carmen immediately joined Kevin on the search and rescue mission.  Any excuse to climb was welcomed. They reported this evening that the chapstick loss and rescue was the funniest part of the day.   

Contemplating chapstick loss. 

Sliding through a slot to get down. 

Retrieved!

Balanced rock. 

Kevin, as a policy, does not climb on the left side of balanced rock. If you could see how delicately it’s perched, you would understand. Half of it fell in the 70’s. As the day wore on, his caution became more understandable.  He’s not risk averse, he just knows that these rocks fall and there’s no need to temp fate. Kevin himself was a balanced rock of risk-taking and risk-aversion at the same time. 

We thought this looked like middle finger rock. 

…and another middle finger rock. 

The girls quickly learned that most everything was climbable if we found the right route. At some point they pressed on past the point where Kevin had ever been. We were so grateful they did, because it toook us into a breathtaking hidden canyon. 

Sand dune arch

The formation on the right is corndog rock. 

Kevin told the girls to look behind this slab on this rock shelf. They climbed up and were rewarded with a view of…

…this single puma shoe that somebody lost forever. This shoe discovery became the funniest of the day. 

After leaving sand dune arch, I mentioned to Joel that I felt like we were Indiana Jones when he was at Petra. Kevin asked, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade?  Yes, they filmed it there. He pointed out their set locations, like this:

Indie crawled through that arch. 

No picture can capture how much we enjoyed interacting with the landscape at Arches.  We ate in the car between Arches stops and it was time to head to Canyonland. 

Where Arches was full of flashy sites that were easy to access on paved roads, Canyonland NP could only truly be enjoyed by those adventurous enough to get there.  The 4x4 became even more important, but the reward was huge. The landscape at Canyonland cannot be captured by pictures at all. I’ll post our pale attempts, but even Kevin said he quit trying to take pictures of it.  No picture captured the depth and scale and 3D effects.  If the Grand Canyon is the crowned beauty queen, Arches was the swimsuit winner, and Canyonland won congeniality. 

On our way to Canyonland, Kevin took us to 8,000 year old petroglyphs. 

We came in the back entrance to Canyonland as well, passing by the Thelma and Louise cliff:

We did not need this instruction. Some people did, apparently. Kevin said a driver for the other 4x4 company died recently. He would routinely go and stand out on a balanced rock and let his customers take pictures of him. One day he hopped out there and the rock collapsed, dropping him down the cliff to his death. The keys were in his pocket, the car doors locked, and the customers (having just watched their driver fall to his death) had no cell service. Kevin always left the keys in the ignition with the doors unlocked at every stop.  That’s apparently why, in case he died. Geeez. Kevin said he’s far more concerned about rockfalls into the road. While it’s unlikely that the rockfall would hit us, if it blocked the road, the only way out was to keep going another 120 miles through crazy terrain. 

This, for example, probably inspired Kevin’s scenario of concern. However, we drove under this rock like it wasn’t there.

Kevin’s company is also the local vehicle rescue for people who get stuck in the park. He had a ton to fun stories about people not using common sense or making informed decisions. Basically, folks that didn’t attend the Woody Woodward school of common sense. 

I’ll try to give you just this one scenery pic, but it’s ridiculously underwhelming compared to what we actually experienced. 

A miserbaly underwhelming picture of the “Islands in the Sky” area of Canyonland. 

Nevermind with the pictures. It’s just something one has to experience. I believe that neither of the girls will need pictures to remember today.  

After getting back to the hotel, we were all famished… perhaps even too famished. But Carmen had to change pants because we realized all of that rock climbing had led to a blowout:

Note: Carmen both posed this photo and green-lighted it’s use on our blog.

We walked to Dewey’s, a restaurant that Kevin claims to eat at 4 times per week.

Once we sat down to order, we changed our mind, took our food to go, and ate in our room instead.  Now there is more video gaming going on while I write the blog. 

We have completely trashed our hotel room. After we organize the bags, we are all off to sleep for our drive to Grand Junction and flight home.