October 31 Arches National Park

The Three Gossips

Happy Halloween! We both wore our Halloween shirts today. I added my socks and earrings and several children along our travels pointed them all out to their mothers. We didn’t leave until mid-morning for Arches National Park. Since we were full of breakfast, we failed to think about lunch. That is, that there is no food concession in the park. At least I filled our water bottles. We managed 4 hours on some dried fruit and nuts we carry in the truck and a tiny bag of Doritos that we shared. Anyway, we stopped at the visitor center which was new since we visited quite a few years ago. The movie was excellent and the exhibit was so different than any other with fake rock formations that looked like those in the park. Great explanation of how it all happened over millions of years.

Bill at Balanced Rock

Tiny little Bill at the North Arch

We headed out for our auto tour and several trail walks to get up close and personal with the arches. This is the most different national park in the country. The stately red rocks and the pinnacles and the arches. You could easily spend a couple of days there. In addition to seeing the Turret Arch, North and South Arches, Cove Arch, Double Arch and Delicate Arch, we viewed a number of rock formations. Balanced Rock is amazing, as are the Fiery Furnace formations and all the fins. The fins look like fish fins in shape and are the style of rocks that over time the centers erode and become arches. Arches National Park just has so many different aspects. There are animals too and we watched for the bighorn sheep, but although I’m an excellent wildlife spotter, I didn’t manage to spot one of them today. We agreed that we should have driven to the end of the park road and started our tour with Devils Garden so we could see the Landscape Arch, because by the time we got that far, it had been almost 4 hours and that hike was 1.6 miles round trip and would have taken over and hour and we were both tired from our previous 2 trails. I’m sure there will be a next time as we both like Moab and would like to go on a rafting trip next time too.

Fins

The first place we stopped in Moab was Wendy’s for a tiny meal to tide us over till dinner. That was a good little hamburger with mustard and pickle, washed down with a small Frosty! My favorite Wendy’s meal! Since Bill remembered his book list we stopped at the used book store and he was lucky to find 3 books on his list. I hope they last him til Kam mails some of the ones I ordered a couple of weeks ago that the dummies mailed home instead of the address I gave them. We had to stop at the grocery because we ran out of dish soap, so we picked up a few other things to tide us over til we reach Flagstaff. Not that we would go hungry, but better to have a variety.

Xena was ready and waiting when we got home. After we put things away and I put a load of wash in we took her on a long walk around the park. Bill spent some time visiting with our neighbor who told him they’d been to Alaska twice, both times on caravans for free as the tail gunner and wagon master. I still don’t want to go a formal caravan but would love to get 3-4 couples together to go. That to me would be the ultimate RV trip!

I fixed fish tonight and Bill didn’t say a negative thing about it. I also used some of my white pumpkin. I cut it in large chunks and sprayed it with olive oil and sprinkled with a mixture of baking spices and splenda. It was pretty good. We had our steamed broccoli and half of the little loaf of bread Bill picked from the marked down cart. Just as I was putting dinner on the table, Bill got the bad news that his close friend Jim McKenzie died today. He’s really sad that he could not be there to see him during his hospital stay and won’t be there to convey his condolences to the family. They were roommates in the early Florida days and ended up teaching together at West Orange for many years. That’s 2 of his West Orange friends to die while we’ve been gone.

I just made Bill a hot chocolate and a cappuccino for me and once I post this it will be reading time for the night.