Day 11 - To Moab

We begin our trek today following I-70 heading west and will connect with Rte 191 south to Arches National Park and Moab, when we reach Utah.

As we travel on I-70, we climb to a considerable height and pass through the Eisenhower Tunnel which is at about 11,000 feet.  The scenery at this elevation great and we take several pictures of the surrounding mountains.

We enter Vail for a group picture and of course to do a little shopping.  Vail is at an elevation of 8,150 feet.  We shopped in a couple of shops and picked up some hot chocolate, made from scratch I might add.

Onward, we continue our way on I-70 following the Eagle river at least until it flowed into the Colorado. 

We pass through Glenwood Canyon with its craggy rock formations.  Very impressive.

Along the Colorado River, we see some rafters.  Some of them were either entering white waters while others had already passed those locations and were in flat waters or looking at more white water.

Shortly after entering Utah we headed south on Rte 191. 

Here as with the rest of today’s journey we travel through very nice scenery.

Before long, we reach Arches National Park.

Traveling into Arches, we see some pretty impressive rock formations.  We have also driven up into the rocks and as you can see, we are quite high up.  You can see a sand dune in the bottom of the picture.  You can just barely see some people that have climbed up the dune.

Our first stop in Arches National Park is at the view point they call Park Avenue.

Here also is a rock formation that resembles an ancient Egyptian Queen.

As we are getting on the bus, I took a picture of our bus driver, Ching, with Wall Street in the background.

While we were at the Wall Street overlook; I spied a lizard and of course had to take a picture of it.  It was not the first, nor will it be the last animal we see and take pictures of it and post it in the blog.  Isn't he (or she) so cute?

We travel past the three gossips.

After we continued on, we stop for a short hike around Balanced Rock.  You can walk up close and right around the monolith so Park officials must still believe it is relatively safe.  Now, walking around Balanced Rock, you get a feel for its massive size, in the picture not so much.  How massive is the bolder portion?  Estimated at 3,577 tons!  At 2,000 pounds a ton, that would make it about 7,154,000 pounds or for our kilogram friends just under 3,250,000 kg.  And the balanced rock is 55 feet tall. 

If you look closely at the rock’s profile and the way the shadows are on the rock at this time of day, it looks like a gold fish.  At least that’s what people say and I’m sticking to it.

The view from Balanced Rock is just as impressive with windows in the foreground and snow capped mountains in the background.

Leaving Balanced Rock, we traveled to the Windows Area in the park.  Carmen and I hike up to the North Window and took some pictures.  That’s Carmen in the lower part of the window in the yellow jersey.    

Then went as far as necessary to view both windows at the same time.  They look like a pair of glasses.

We decide to do the hike to Double Arch to get a picture of this structure.  Most of the people on the trip have gone to only one or the other, so in order to get to both we are moving briskly.  But, I have to get pictures of both the “glasses” windows and the Double Arches. 

Here is another picture of our Arches adventure.

And another.

Leaving Arches, we head to a jet boat ride on the Colorado River.  I will post that trip on the next posting.  Bob and Carmen