Today we drove SE from Price to Arches National Park near Moab, UT – the world’s greatest density of natural rock arches. Our jaws remained dropped the entire time we drove and hiked around the larger-than-life red rock formations. Our favorite was scrambling up to the huge double arch. A double rainbow has nothing on the double arch!
We ventured a little north from here through an old ghost town and saw a young antelope grazing alone. We were told there were some petroglyphs and pictographs (not to be confused with pictoglyphs and petrographs) on the cliff faces just past town. There indeed were both- the oldest from 9,000 years ago! It was so silent and a bit eerie looking at the many areas of ancient art. Some markings were pretty recent though- crazy that some people find it funny to deface these old treasures. Many think the proof of alien existence lies in one of the pictographs. Hmm, maybe.
We were in for our longest stretch of driving yet- 7.5 hours from here to Laramie, WY. Our mission changed to finding enough gas stations and avoiding hitting any night creatures in the Utah and Colorado wilderness! We barely succeeded on both accounts. We saw two foxes, several rabbits, and many deer: our deer sighting count rose to 18. One of the deer was a freshly killed prey, which a large mountain lion was dragging across the street with his teeth!! He wasn’t afraid of us at all as we gazed at him from just a few yards away. The long drive was worth that experience alone!
Cumulative Stats:
- Bags of ice purchased from gas stations: 9
- Aniya’s total use of emergency potty: 4
- Total # times we’ve eaten out: 0
- Total Miles Driven: 1,776.5