After a long and cold night, we decided that not checking the weather forecast before going camping is just plain stupid. It was below -8°C in the morning. Even all our stuff inside the car was frozen. So we got up real early (which was a relief really), and went up to the Sunrise Point to check out the sunrise. Not sure if it was worth a night-in-hell like that...
Next on the program was Canyonlands National Park. On our way there, we passed Capitol Reef National Park, which was really pretty to drive through, with red high rocky flanks and yellow trees alongside the road, but our time is limited so we skipped that one for a visit.
At Canyonlands, we visited the major viewpoints: Grand View Overlook, Buck Canyon Overlook, and Mesa Arch. Canyonlands has a pretty cool landscape, as you see canyons within other canyons. Unfortunately we didn't have time to do anything else, as we had also planned to visit Arches National Park that day.
We arrived in Arches around 4PM, just in time to see the most important features like the Courtyard, the Windows, Landscape Arch, and Delicate Arch (Utah's symbol). You can find some arches throughout all the national parks, but so many are located in this park, because of the unique geological layers beneath the surface. In ancient history, the surface was cracked in tons of parallel plates, which then started to erode, and a slack of rock is the perfect base for the formation of arches. At the final arch (Delicate Arch) we saw familiar faces: the couple that was also hiking with us through Hidden Canyon in Zion. What a small world, the guy even had been to Belgium!
For more photo's, check picasa
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