moab, utah, lies only a few miles from arches national park. we went there first thing in the morning.

the park covers a substantial land area, and the arches all seem to be at the far end of it. after paying our $10 to get in, we drove past 10 miles of red cliffs and desert mesa.

even without seeing any arches at first, the area was beautful.

the first arch we came to was called 'delicate arch.' we parked the car and hiked the mile or so to the lower viewing point. this put us on the opposite side of a deep canyon from the arch.

the arch itself was small and somewhat unimpressive, but the canyon was beautiful. and we were really right up on the dropof.

it was sooo hot up there though. we were stupid and didn't bring any water, so after a short rest on top of the cliff, we hiked back down to the van for about a gallon of water each.

the remainder of the arches were either way too far to hike to in the heat, or they were right by the road. so we did a drive by of the rest of the park.

some areas of the park actually had many visable arches in one place. i got lots of good pictures.

the brochure states that the formation of the arches is somewhat of a mystery. they have theories but none of them seems conclusive. abie said that this was definitive proof that the arches were carved by aliens. he likes to read the weekly world news ("the papers").

just up the road from arches is canyonlands national park. i had never heard of this place, but it sounded cool so we went.

canyonlands is a lot like the grand canyon except it's not just one canyon. they're not as deep as the grand cayon, but wider. and the strata are thinner, giving it a more stepped contour look.

it was amazing! these canyons went out as far as the eye can see, and the entire park is on this "island in the sky" up above it all. great viewing.

around 3:00pm, we took off and drove the rest of the day across utah, towards zion. abie listened to more dr. laura.

we pulled into cedar city, utah, relatively early and picked out a fancy hotel. to date on our trip we've spent $12.00 on lodging (the campground in moab), so we decided to splurge for a nice hotel for once.

the best-western town & country was a pretty nice place. we drank the cider and white russians that we bought up in colorado while watching a history channel documentary on the pharohs of egypt. every time they said pharoh, pyramid, mummy, or nile we drank.