Ride Ray Ride: Arches National Park and Moab Utah- skinny tires seem so out of place.

I came through Salt Lake City on my way to southern Utah and that's all I have to say about that. After two days of remnant rain from the same system that flooded Colorado I headed south to Moab and Arches National Park. They had been getting rain for a week or so and I was monitoring it or I may have gotten there sooner. The good news is that the desert pops with color after a week of rain and the dust settles and all is fresh. I love the land of big skies and big rocks. I've been looking forward to this from the moment I started planning this trip. This is another pic heavy post as will be next few posts I'm sure so without further ado, I give you Southern Utah.

When I got to the park the campground was full which was no surprise so I spent awhile scoping out the BLM sites outside the park. The one that was the most promising was right on the bike path which is awesome and also has cell service but alas was full so I grabbed an alternate with the plan to get an early start and grab a spot as it opened up the next morning. This spot wasn't too shabby but all these sites are next to roads and this one led to 4x4 land so the vehicles going by tended to be loud and LOUDER!

The next morning when I pulled into my campground of choice there was a great site open and I nabbed it, set up camp and headed out on the bike path to ride all the paved roads in the National Park.

Nice bike path and the concrete structure next to the river is a pier and beam bridge to provide bike lanes where there was not enough land between the road and the river to do so. WOW and then the BAB (big assed bridge) across the Colorado River got my attention. Somebody loves cyclists. Mostly I think this path is meant to get mountain bikers to the plethora of single track paths that Moab is famous for. I had already decided to get a mountain bike but now they're just rubbing my nose in it.

When I got to the park the show really began, WOW! The views are so big and expansive it is really just silly to try to show it to you with pics from my Iphone or any pictures for that matter but I have to at least try so here goes.

The arches are the big draw here but the panoramas are more impressive to me. I just can't get the spectacular nature of this place across in pictures so you'll just have to come see it for yourself. My friend Toni is in love with this place and I can see why.

It's not often you get to see balanced rock reflected in a pool of water. This area gets only ten inches of rain per year and they must have gotten a big part of that just before I got here. Everything was green and the post-rain flowers were starting to pop out everywhere.

It was a great day but as the sun descended I recrossed the mighty Colorado and headed back to camp where every night there is a light show on the cliffs above my camp site.

The next day I did some reading early to allow rain to pass by. As the rain passed by I headed back to the park for a hike to see delicate arch which was closed when I first arrived due to flood damage. It was a fun hike and I spent a good bit of time just hanging out. I'm not much for the drive-by sight seeing. If you tried to look at this post on a slow connection, I'm so sorry but I edited to but a few of the pictures I took.

And there it is, the most famous natural stone arch in the world.

The showers in the morning continued in the afternoon but were sliding past to the south which made for some great views. I had several nice conversations with people from Canada, California and Austria.