Monday 30 August: Moab area and Arches

Today we had our first true Weasel Death-march™. Uttering blatant falsehoods like "just around the corner", "almost there", as well as truths "best thing evah", he lured us all up steep inclines, treacherous rocks, hazardous scrambles and death-defying ledges...

View from the campsite

Tenacious plants

Pristine sand dunes, right behind our camp site.

Kia Soul, a bit unsteady in high winds but not a bad little car.

The tent, at this point still standing... ;-)

A little gully behind the campsite, heading to an awesome sand dune

Wind-shaped

Juniper berries, I believe. Wonderful scent.

ouch.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!! all the way down!

Amazing vistas in every possible direction!

Seems a very basic urge in humans, to make little rock piles.
I came across them all over the states.

Nature makes some pretty impressive rock piles as well.

Just..... wow.

Mineral colours (green), I still need to look this up.

Wildlife

Slogging up this rock was really HARD WORK.

We came from back there.

Heading that way!

And onwards. Just a little bit further....

Pictures don't show howling winds, do they.

At this point I lost my nerve and decided I'd gone as far as I wanted to go.
Delicate Arch, thought I, was probably lovely but so was the scenery right here.

This handsome black bird came right up to the girl.
Within touching distance, unafraid. Watching us.
According to Vangie, this is a raven, a spirit bird.
Someone's checking on the girl, watching her grow.

As we were looking at this little rock pool a man came over
and told us all about the biology and geology of this little patch of water.
He was talking about urine and such impacting this life, it was quite fascinating at the time
but obviously not a lasting fascination because I don't remember it all.

Many delicate arches in this area

At the end, I walked another mile or two (am I a masochistic madwoman??!!??)
to look at this rock art.
It was worth it though, amazing images and really a surprise that
they lasted this well over the ages.

Then we hopped in the car and went to a parking area, where we had a clear view
of the delicate arch we almost killed ourselves over, on the approach from the other side.
hmmm.

...under a burning sun and seemingly hurricane-force wind. The latter proved true when we came back to the campground with the last neurons firing intermittently, to find that my tent had been blown over, flattened, the outer tent torn to fluttering ribbons.

The Weasel tent was still okay.

We set up my tent again with help of duct tape and I slept relatively well because the wind had died down.

Both evenings at Arches were spectacular. There's something about the high desert in the dark, that's pure magic.