Arches and Black Canyon of the Gunnison

First of all, happy 4th of July everyone! I have been meaning to update our blog for weeks now.... and there have been lots of adventures since the last post. I'll start by continuing with our National Park's "tour" and camping we did at the beginning of June. Later I'll update with Colorado pictures, Minnesota, Walla Walla, Chelan, and Bellingham.... so stay tuned! :)

Curt and I continued our adventures as we left Zion by heading to Arches National Park! It was beautiful… We arrived about 5 pm, and since there weren’t any camp sites available, we just hung out and hiked in the park until it got dark, which wasn’t until about 9:30. We LOVED Arches, and the little town of Moab just outside of the park was awesome – definitely somewhere we would like to visit again. For any of you mountain bikers out there – apparently it’s DA-bomb. :)

First we took a little jaunt to Balanced Rock, which you can see me “holding” here:

Here's a pictures of Double Arch, and Turret Arch:

From there we headed up the road to the trail head for Delicate Arch. The hike was gorgeous! Amazing panoramic views and scenery – this was one of my favorite hikes of our whole cross-country trip…and the view at the top was mesmerizing. I could have sat up there for hours (and many people were doing just that!) Check out Curt and I under the arch....

After viewing the Fiery Furnace from above, and snapping a few last pics in the fading light, we made a little late dinner and headed out of the park to find a place to camp for the night.

Next stop, The Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park in Colorado! I have to be honest, this stop was high on Curt’s list, but I had never even heard of it, and didn’t really know what to expect as we drove the high mountain road up to it.

Boy was I ever in for a surprise! It was gorgeous! Sweeping views of a breathtakingly deep canyon with a green river flowing at the bottom…We decided we definitely wanted to hike down the steep canyon walls to the bottom, so into the visitor’s center we went to grab a back country pass.
You can see the river... WAY the heck down there!

My first clue should have been when the Park Ranger mentioned the hike was “SELF-RESCUE” (aka, if you fall and break your leg, you crawl out…yikes). It didn’t help that they kept mentioning this fact, and then had to show us a book of all the scary parts of the hike (like the section you have to repel down the trail with a chain, or all the loose boulders you crawl over, or the THICK layers of poison ivy you cannot possibly avoid). Did this deter us? Heck no! So down the trail we went. I definitely thought about turning back after sliding (not hiking mind you) down the first 50 yards of the trail. Think all loose rocks, dirt, and pine needles on a ridiculously steep incline. The fact that Curt also put HIS cell phone down as the emergency number our contact sheet we gave to the rangers also had me a little worried. Sweet that they would be calling our cell phone, which doesn’t get service, if we ended lying at the bottom of a cliff somewhere!! (Thankfully that didn't happen).

Here's some pictures of the descent:

On our way down we also kept a look out for poison ivy, which sadly, niether one of us knew how to identify. We finally decided on the plant below. Wrong, wrong, wrong! We looked it up later, to see what it really looked like, and I'm sure we were frolicking in meadows of the itchy stuff! Thank goodness I was in pants. :)

Finally at the bottom of the canyon enjoying some lunch:

It was actually a pretty awesome hike, and if given the chance to do it again, I would definitely go for it!

Our adventures continued in Colorado.... and I'll update soon with pictures from Colorado Springs, the Garden of the Gods, and Boulder!