Day 25 (September 25, 2019) - Arches and Dinosaur Prints

Arches National Park and Dinosaur Footprints

Many days my knees bark at me in protest of my demands.  Today, they looked at me in the mirror and said "Thanks for the rest yesterday.  Today we are at your beck and call."  So we made it a catch-up day.  We needed to revisit some places that we weren't able to quite seal the deal in the first visit.  We missed a hike in Arches, where I also missed some photos.  We missed the dinosaur tracks on the river drive.  So we did all of those.  When I say "we", I mean Susan, Lonnie, and I.  John and Marcia went mountain biking in Dead Horse Point State Park.  John cannot have an idle moment.

Our start was in Arches where I took some photos on the drive through the park.

The 3 Gossips along Park Avenue

Balanced Rock aka Potato Head (as per Susan)

Pothole Arch

Devil's Garden lies at the end of Arches and has a couple of trails to arches.  We did a portion of the major trail, the Double O Arch Trail, and 2 offshoots from it, Pine Tree Trail and Tunnel Trail for a total of 2.4 miles.  We stopped on the Double O Arch Trail at Landscape Arch.  That's the point where the trail takes a decidedly dastardly turn and forces hikers to climb a fin and then walk along it.  The climb is pictured below.

Landscape Arch

Double O Arch Trail

We backtracked to the trail branches for the other arches.

Tunnel Arch

Pine Tree Arch

With those hikes and arch visits completed, we were finished with Arches National Park.  We had 1 more place to visit, though.  We had to get back to the dinosaur tracks that we weren't prepared to hike to yesterday.  We drove to the site and read the instructions that said they were about 1/4 mile away so we set off down the trail.  Within minutes, it turned into a boulder-strewn alleyway.  We saw a sign about 40 feet away and Lonnie climbed up to read it.  It said "Dino Tracks 1.2 miles".  As determined as we were, there was no way for us to navigate that trail so we headed back to the trailhead in frustration.  Once there, a gentleman pointed to the dino tracks and petroglyphs above the trail we had just left.  There were obviously others deeper in the mountains but these were the ones we came for and we left happy.

Dinosaur tracks

Petroglyphs

Petroglyphs

We then headed back to Moab for a stop in town with a special treat - more huck ice cream for Lonnie and me.  Susan changed things up and had pecan praline.  We knew there would be no lunch.  The day was relatively short so we had a Marcia-cooked meal and then we went to Moab for a short walk along the creek and a retail store.

Susan’s quote of the day:  “That's like walking up a rockslide."  She nailed the description of the dino track trail to a T.

The highlights - Devil's Garden and dino prints.
The regrets - None.

Today's total miles - 87
Today's miles from start to destination - 0
Today's miles on side trips - 87
Today's miles driven by Paul - 87
Today's miles driven by Susan - 0
Today's hours in car - 2.5
Total Miles Hiked - 2.6

Cumulative total miles - 6,886
Cumulative miles from start to destination - 3,668
Cumulative miles on side trips - 3,218
Cumulative miles driven by Paul - 5,904
Cumulative miles driven by Susan - 587
Cumulative hours in car - 142
Cumulative Miles Hiked - 47.3