Not the Golden Arches

Wednesday, March 26, 2008
We decided to have the breakfast of champions before our last day of hiking: donuts. We stopped at a local grocery store to get the donuts and various other supplies. Jessica and I had polished of the bag of Jolly Ranchers (except the blue raspberry ones which weren’t worth eating), several bags of gummy bears, and most of a bag of Starbursts, so we decided to hit up the candy aisle. I selected a bag of peachies (which I just remembered have yet to be eaten). As we were standing there, Jessica said “I wish they had a giant bag of gummy bears.” Just as she was saying it, my eyes paused on a big gold bag. Could it be??? Indeed, as if her wish were instantly granted, I pulled a 3 pound bag of gummy bears of the shelf. That’s 32 servings (I checked). Amazing. I asked her to wish for something else, but she didn’t seem to want to challenge fate.

While stuffing our face with donuts and pastries, we headed the few miles up the road to see Arches in the daylight. We determined the best hike would be the Devils Garden trail (once Jessica saw my logic, that fool!). The hike was about 6 miles, plus side trails to several arches. There were eight major arches along the trail, most notably, the Landscape Arch, which “stretches 306 feet, yet is only about 11 feet thick at its center” (straight out of the trail map literature). The trail was amazing, taking you through amazing rock formations. We climbed up a few of the rocks to get a view down (again I was paranoid about Adrian falling to his death, though unafraid for myself). The hike was absolutely amazing. Adrian particularly loved it. We all got re-sunburned from a few days before at the Grand Canyon.

After the hike, we did a few of the overlooks, though very little was as impressive as what we had already seen. We went to an overlook of the Delicate Arch, which is one of the most photographed arches and is on Utah’s license plate. Our final stop was a short hike at the North and South Window arches, where I got tired of being in the wind, went off ahead and almost got lost. I can’t decide if it counts as being lost when you have lost sight of anything resembling a trail, but can still see the parking lot. Regardless, it freaked me out for a bit, but my travel companions were really good about just letting me be upset for awhile.

Having completed Arches, it was time for our 11 hour drive back to Reno.