A tour of special places at Arches Natinal Park in Utah

After two months it's time to hook up and move on.  We will depart Arches National Park early Monday morning and start heading back to Washington to visit family and friends.  Last week we had daughter Debbie here to visit us.  She came to relax, enjoy the heat and do nothing.  The day after she arrived we had a huge rainstorm; she must have brought it from Washington State.

We did get a nice ride in that day to see some of Moab and the mountains around here.  But after that is was hike, hike, hike (so much for relax, Deb!).  We had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Dell Keys who is a volunteer here at the park and knows her way around the Fiery Furnace like the back of her hand, so she took us on a evening 3- hour trip through areas not seen by another human, well maybe a few.

We snaked through several very tight spots...

found Surprise Arch with the evening light making it glow...

Jackie was showing off how she could walk on two fins at the same time.  We all had to do it to get here.

Another area we searched out was Skull Arch aka Underpants Arch (so named by Dr. Keys husband, who passed away a couple of years ago).

Debbie had to crawl through of all places Crawl Through Arch and

work her way under the rocks to come out in another area.

We did get a picture of the three of us after walking through Walk Through Bridge.

We exited the Fiery Furnace with a look back with no idea of where we went in or came out.  What a joy to go in there again with such a great tour director as Dr. Keys.

Up an hour before sunrise and headed to the windows section of the park so Dick could get this picture that he had wanted to take for the last 2 months.  Looking through North Window at Turret Arch about 5 seconds after the first rays of light hit it.

We made a deal with Dr. Keys that if she gave us a tour of the Fiery Furnace we would show her Magic Mystery Bridge (See a previous Blog).  To give you a better understanding of it's size look closely and see if you can find Debbie sitting on a ledge of the main wall.  Thanks to Brenda, our co-host, for this great picture.

Still another day and another hike into the Devils Garden, but just the three of us.  We wanted to try and show Debbie some of the areas that most people don't see.  We made it all the way to Double O Arch and found a way to get this shot from behind the arch.  It's hard to see but behind the little tree in the lower left is the smaller of the 2 arches.

And this shot we have only seen one other time and it is looking at the backside of Landscape Arch with Debbie sitting on the edge of a 200' drop off.

We got our picture taken in front of Navajo Arch sitting on an old Juniper tree.  The last time the two of us came here there was snow on the ground.

As a parting shot (pun intended) Debbie showing her excitement after walking through Broken Arch.

Thanks for the visit Debbie; we had a ball showing you a few special places at Arches.  Glad you got to "relax".

To be continued...