Road Trip Day 26 – Canyonlands Natl Park to Arches National Park to Glenwood Springs, CO

We woke up super early (by our standards), before 8 am, and had coffee. We packed up our gear and were on the road before 8:30 am. We jammed it into Moab where we stopped for breakfast. We had bagel breakfast sandwiches and shared a fresh fruit smoothie. We then walked over to a competing coffee shop/café and realized that this one was way better than the one we had just eaten at- oh well!; next time we will know. This didn’t stop us from buying some sweets for the road. I got a chocolate chip cookie, and Lauren got a cranberry breakfast bar. Both were delicious. Especially the cookie. Lauren actually said this cookie was better than Cowboy Cookies in SLO, which apparently is a big deal. We stopped by there in SLO last time we were there so I could try them, but they were closed, so I have no basis for comparison. Lauren described this cookie from ‘Wake & Bake Café’ as "dark chocolate melty chips, the cookie is both crunchy and chewy, about 4 inches across in circumference, about a half inch thick, all in all, exactly the way a cookie should be" that was Lauren’s quote while eating it. Anyhow, I'm excited to try Cowboy next time in SLO to get Lauren’s comparative analysis again. We then jumped back in the car for the quick 5 mile ride to Arches National Park.

That's the thing about Moab, it's surrounded literally by stunning national parks and just beautiful areas in general. So it’s a surprise that the town is so weak. The café we were at was cool, so it does have potential. But it's just an ugly town and it appears to be only set up for tourism in the summers. We got into Arches at about 11 and b-lined it straight to the ‘Delicate Arch’ Hike. This was a 3 mile hike round-trip. The hike up was pretty cool; a little climbing over slick rock with some views of stunning canyon country.

Also, they had this crazy green colored rock. Not sure what causes the green color, see pictures.

I would be interested to find out why it's green and what causes the color variation.
Once you reach the Arch the hike becomes worth it. Delicate Arch is spectacular.

Don’t know what else to say about it. It was really incredible. Only a few other people were up there. They were just sitting there staring at the arch. We took a few photos and then left.

We took our time on the way down and took a small, labeled detour to some petroglyphs; roped off so you couldn’t get near them, but still impressive. Petroglyphs are really awesome to see in person, I highly recommend it.

And as far as I can tell, we as a people don’t know much about them. There are a lot of guesses as to what they mean, but for us they are just cool to see and fun/interesting to look at. We headed back to the car, and on our way out of Arches, took some roadside pictures (which I hate doing). But the area was so beautiful that I found myself yanking the car onto the shoulder to get a quick picture multiple times. I vowed not to do this once out of the park and I have not done it as promised.
We stopped by the Arches visitor center and got more postcards that we promise to send out, but still haven’t done…. We’re slow at that unfortunately. We were soon back in the car and headed towards Colorado. Once on the I-70 we almost immediately saw a group of Pronghorn Antelope grazing in a field-much to Lauren’s delight. This was one animal she was dying to see in Yellowstone, but never saw. Dream fulfilled! Now if only we can see a Moose in Kansas, and a pack of Wolves in Oklahoma we’ll be all set.

Note the lack of color on the CO sign...

We arrived in Glenwood Springs just before dark. Glenwood Springs, CO is on the western side of the Rockies and is a really beautiful little town. We checked a few hotel prices and I was able to talk down a lady on the price of a room. She said she liked my cologne and asked what it was; I said it was 4 days of campfire and not showering in Utah. I think she thought I was crazy and wished she hadn’t given us a lower rate, but the damage was done and we had a nice discount on a nice room. Lauren and I were happy to have talked down the price as it seemed Colorado was much more expensive than Utah. We again did some research for food options online and settled on Chinese. Lauren is disappointed that no one seems to use Yelp, and spent a long time perusing the options. It seems we should be gun shy after our Provo experience with Asian cuisine, but this turned out to be really good. Unfortunately, no Harry Potter was on tonight;  we watched Conan and then passed out. We're hoping to make it into Kansas tomorrow; as we hit the drive hard, drive fast portion of our trip into Arkansas.