Utah vacation, Day 6, Arches National

Moab

Advice if you go to Moab in September - Book ahead of time!!  It was a good thing we had made reservations.  We were lucky to find a room. The hotels in Moab are able to charge a hefty price - almost double from other places (luckily we had points we used to get it more than half price). 

We would never have guessed that September was one of the busiest seasons.  School has started, so you wouldn't think so.  But tourists come from all over the world.  Summer time is very hot in Utah and we were told that September and October are prime months. 

While we were checking in, a young couple came and told that the hotel was booked full.  You could tell that this wasn't the first place they had stopped.  The wife was looking pretty discouraged.  Hope they didn't have to sleep in their car!

After a good nights rest, we drove to Arches National Park, just on the edge of town.  Arches has the largest concentration of natural stone arches in the world - more than 2,500!! 

 So many balanced rocks too.  How does this happen!?

We were able to drive through it all in about 3 hours.  We got out of the car a few times.  I wasn't physically up to hiking this day (except a couple short ones), which was a little disappointing, but it was just beautiful to drive.

We ran into our first Japanese visitors.  Usually you can run into lots of Japanese, but this time, just 2 couples from Nagoya and Sendai.  We took their picture and they took ours.  Fun to speak Japanese with them!

We stopped at this spot.  There were a few picnic tables set up here so we had our lunch.  I was so glad I had packed lots of lunches for this week.  We had the last of it at this place.

This little bird (possibly a Lazuli Bunting?  The mate had an orange breast) was also scratching for his lunch.  

If one would want to, you could come to Moab and spend a week here; hiking, biking, four wheel driving and river expeditions.  We really only skimmed the surface, so to speak.  Maybe someone reading this will be encouraged to go to Utah to visit.  I was just amazed at the beauty of this place!  Would love to go back again!