The mosquitoes that had been relentless the night before (this post) were slightly less so in the morning.

However the surroundings were beautiful as the sun reached the west side of the canyon.

But we didn't linger around camp. We packed up and drove just north of Moab to the entrance of Arches National Park.

The cliffs on the left side of the photo are part of Arches and that's the Colorado River flowing our of the canyon in the center of the photo.

I had been here once or twice before but that was almost forty years ago. (Oh yeah, I was going to find my old slides and see if I have photos from back then.)

I don't remember the names of all the arches. Besides sometimes I don't want to know what names other people have used for formations. I like to enjoy them without always having to see or think of something that is not a rock. I'll make up my own name if something comes to me.

We had one day to see the park and, knowing that it was going to be a hot day, we decided to start with one of the longer trails. Out and back on the more traveled trail would have been about 5 miles. We ended up taking the "primitive" route to come back and that was 7 miles.

I thought about giving up taking photos because it seem so hard to capture the grandeur, the color, the textures.

But of course I continued to shoot photos and I am sharing some of my favorites.

Distances are so deceptive in this country. We had seen these rock walls in the distance and I had thought, "it's a good thing we're not going there". The "primitive route" took us around those and beyond.

Cairns are important in finding the trails over slickrock and through washes. Seeing those little rock towers kept us on track in places where the trail wasn't obvious.

More from Arches National Park in the next post.