More Arches..

Spent more time in Arches National Park. The place is amazing. We've been going in each day before dawn and again in the evening - mainly to beat the heat when we're riding around on the bike. We did a great sunset walk out to Delicate Arch which is probably the most 'famous' of the arches here - it's depicted on the Utah state licence plate and the most photographed - great light at sunset and a lovely walk back in the twilight.

Yesterday we got up at 4.30am to ride out to the far end of the park - 45 mins ride from where we're staying to do a 7 mile hike along a primitive trail taking in several arches along the way. Didn't see a single other person until 9am - 3 hours after we'd started and just minutes before we got back to the trailhead! Lots of great animal tracks in the sand - trying to work out if any of them may have been cougar!!

The afteroon we did a ranger-les walk into the 'fiery Furnace' area of the park - you can't get there unless with a ranger or with a permit. Fiery Furnace is a labyrinth of narrow sandstone canyons and fins and there's no trails and it's very maze-like so easy to get lost. It was a 3 hour walk with lots of interesting facts from the ranger and really cool narrow ledges, tight squeezes and arches to scramble through