UTAH ADVENTURES (part four)

After recovering from our hiking adventures

we decided to discover downtown Moab.

I did not read the Moab guide book until after we returned home.

I discovered that there is a downtown art walk 

on the second Saturday of the month from April through November.

Some of the sculptures we saw are part of the art walk or part of 

the Moab ArTTrails program.

We wandered around some of the shops.

There were a lot of locally made items for sale.

After dinner we explored the bridge and park

north of town at the Moab crossing of the Colorado Riverway.

Climbing Wall

 This was the pool at the motel.

The waterfall flowed from an arch!

I thoroughly enjoyed the hot tub one evening.

The view from the motel parking lot.

 On the drive home we had to go through Monarch Pass.

Again, for someone afraid of heights, the 11,300 foot pass

was not much fun.

Of course with the direction we were driving 

the shear drop off was on my side of the car.

By the time we arrived in Salida for lunch and

shopping I decided I liked mountains the best

when I was in the valley gazing up at them.

 

I was glad to arrive home

even though we had no running water yet!!!!

 

UTAH ADVENTURES (part three)

Our exploration of the northern section of Arches National Park 

began at the Fiery furnace Viewpoint.

 Next we drove to the Skyline Arch easy trail.

After these two quick stops 

we were ready for our ultimate destination for the day - 

the Devil's Garden Trailhead.

Several arches are accessible from this trail.

It was rated as the longest difficult trail and 

also included a primitive trail loop.

We decided to traverse the trail in the counter clockwise direction,

since the clockwise direction looked more crowded.

We concluded that if the trail proved too difficult 

we could always turn back.

Which way should we go?

We took the Pine Tree Arch trail.

We were in the middle of Fin Canyon

by the time the trail became difficult.

We reached a point where we were not sure which way to go.

It appeared as if we had to climb a rock fin,

but we had no idea how.

At the point when I was going to admit defeat and 

turn around another couple appeared at the top of the mountain.

Since they were going the opposite direction

they were coming down the mountain while we had to go up.

Once they showed us the way to go we were ready to carry on.

However, there was a huge step up before we could go any further.

Hubby had to give me a boost up!

Now I was clinging to the side of a rock fin

with visions of sliding down the mountain to my death.

I prayed, took a deep breath, and

went forward on hands & feet!!!

Since I am writing this you can correctly assume that I survived the climb.

Here I am saying a prayer of thanks!

Now hubby had to figure out how to get up the huge step.

There was no one behind us to give him a boost.

I pointed out that the other couple had come down on their bottom, 

so maybe he could turn around and boost himself up on his bottom.

It worked!  

He scaled the mountain with no hesitation. 

 The trail actually took us across the top of two rock fins!

Cairns

 The pictures do not really show the heights that were traversed.

For someone who is afraid of heights (me!!)

the heights were terrifying.

I am grateful to be alive to tell the tale. 

 There are still more Utah adventures still to come . .  .   .    .