October 2, 2016
Pongo and I spent the bulk of Sunday at Arches National Park. This was the last of Utah's five national parks for me to visit.
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| Cowboy Camp, Highway 313, UT |
As you'll see in the photos, we were walking and driving under volatile weather conditions on Sunday. A thunderstorm had blown right by us the night before. We wouldn't be so lucky on this evening. More on that later, though, let's start at the beginning.
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| Highway 313, UT |
We had coffee and breakfast before hitting the road for the short drive from our campsite to Arches. I made pancakes. Pongo hadn't been eating his dog food in the mornings, so I gave him a pancake, too. He seemed a bit confused by the syrup at first, but he got into it after a bit of sniffing around. He ate all of the pancakes and left the kibble in his bowl. Well, at least he ate something on this particular morning. I worried about him when he wouldn't eat his breakfast, which he regularly didn't eat on this trip, but he always chowed down for dinner so I fretted less about it as the trip wore on.
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| Highway 313, UT |
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| Arches National Park, UT |
If there's one national park that I've visited that seems like it could have been designed by Walt Disney that would have to be Arches National Park. The rock formations here are plain wacky. At times it was hard to believe this place wasn't man made. The park was also quite crowded, especially considering it was October. I suppose if I didn't have a dog and could have walked on some of these trails I might not have had that feeling. However, as it was we did a lot of drive, stop, shoot and repeat. I can't complain about the quality of the photographs, though. This may be the best set of photos from the trip.
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| Park Avenue, Arches National Park, UT |
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| Arches National Park, UT |
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| Arches National Park, UT |
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| North Window, Arches National Park, UT |
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| Arches National Park, UT |
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| Arches National Park, UT |
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| Skyline Arch, Arches National Park, UT |
We drove out to the campground where I was able to take Pongo for a nice, long walk around the campgrounds. I have to say, this is one of the coolest campgrounds I've come across.
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| Mule Deer -- Arches National Park, UT |
We bumped into a group of mule deer behind one of the campsites. There were two does and three fauns. I didn't have my long lens so I had to settle for some wide-angle shots of the deer. That was a little bit of a bummer, but then again I have a lot of deer photos in my collection. It's not like they were moose or something.
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| Arches National Park, UT |
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| Arches National Park, UT |
As you can see, I didn't get a lot of shots of actual arches at Arches National Park. Most of them required short hikes to get to on trails where dogs are not allowed. There were a couple we could have gotten close to in the car that I just didn't bother with because by the time we had an opportunity in the afternoon I was simply tired of being around so many people and cars and the good lighting had all but disappeared. I just wanted out of there.
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| Highway 313, UT |
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| The Wash |
We left the park and went back to some cool rock formations on BLM land off of Highway 313. Pongo and I did a bit of scrambling and walked up a cool little wash until we were blocked by some large boulders that blocked the little canyon (I don't know what else to call it) that we were in. There were plenty of holes for Pongo to poke his head into and lizards to chase. Except for the hike through the campground he'd had to spend most of the time in Arches inside the car. I was happy to get him out.
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| Highway 313, UT |
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| Highway 313, UT |
We drove out to Canyonlands for a few final shots before calling it a day. The evening turned out to be quite an adventure. It was very windy when we went to sleep. I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of strong wind and then realized I was hearing thunder. I packed all of our bedding into the car and put Pongo in there and then tore down the tent. It began to rain and the lightning moved closer. By the time I had everything packed away and was tucked into bed inside the Element (which is normally very comfortable to sleep in if a little cramped with Pongo) the lightning was landing very close to us. Pongo didn't like that at all. It ended up being a long night.
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| Canyonlands National Park, UT |
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| Canyonlands National Park, UT |
Soundtrack:
- The Band -- Music from the Big Pink
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