Padinago's trip to the USA in 2008

Day 11 - From Salt Lake City to Moab, UT and Arches NP

At 4am the alarm goes off and less than an hour later we leave a nicely illuminated Salt Lake City and head for Moab (Arches National Park).

First we drive to Idaho Falls, a small town where we have a nice breakfast at Starbucks. Fantastic cakes, coffee, hot chocolate…

The road to Moab is amazing with impressive orange colored rock formations, it is extremely hot with temperatures of around 40°C.

A few hours later we reach Arches National Park. It is still very hot and a high protection agent is a good thing and very important is to drink a lot of water. We enter the park and discover the beautiful rock formations and the very special landscape the park offers. You can stop everywhere to take pictures or to go for a walk. We just cannot stop taking pictures because we are so impressed. Here you have to be careful for rattlesnakes, we did not see any (despite the fact that Patrick turned around every rock hoping to see one) but maybe it is better this way…

We manage to see all the arches we planned and also balanced rock is nice to see. We stop at a little path going towards Delicate Arch but it is now extremely hot and there is no place to hide from the sun. We both suffer from the change of temperature (a few days ago we had -3°C in the mountains) and decide not to walk until we reach Delicate Arch in full sun but we admire it from a distance, which was a wise decision!

By the evening we drive to Moab, check in at the hotel and discover just across the hotel a place called The Moab Brewery where the food is AMAZING. Today we decide to have a ‘special’ evening and we decide to start dinner with a margarita, this was not so good for us… we suspect that the combination of sun and alcohol was just a bit too much. We go to bed early…

Daytrip approx. 480 km

Salt Lake City by night Arches National Park, Utah Balancing Rock The Windows Delicate Arch Sand Dune Arch Landscape Arch

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