We got to Arches early, about 8:15 AM. There is basically one road, head into the park on it and at the end of the road turn around and head out. Three or four short side roads exist. One of these is to the campground. We had planned to ‘boondocks’ tonight on BLM ground but a short drive into the campground led us to 3 open sites. Found the host and got one for the night. This despite a campground full sign and a no sites available message on recreation.gov. We’re two for two this way. Maybe our luck will hold at Canyonlands tomorrow.
Arches is high desert, similar to the other parks but the geologic layers differ somewhat so that arches or natural bridges are more likely to be formed. When softer sandstone below erodes it leaves the harder sandstone above.
There were multiple variations on that theme. We had a brief spell of warmth adequate to sit outside and read or relax without bundling up. Around 4 PM it began to get cold again.
Here is our campsite. You can see we used the blocks Will gave me for Christmas to level the camper van. (people keep asking us about it, Peggy has started saying “just look it up on the ModVan website)
We took about 5 short hikes, the longest about a mile. After seeing how things work I’m sure they closed the park yesterday when the number of cars exceeded the number of parking spots at the various attractions. At double arch for example, there are roughly 75 spaces to park. We got one of the few available, and it was still only 10 AM. By noon it was hard to find a parking spot at any of them.
Tomorrow we plan to go to Canyonlands NP tomorrow and maybe snag another open spot in the “full” campground. If our luck doesn’t hold out we’ll boondocks somewhere. Day after we’ll head for Mesa Verde.
No new birds today. Actually almost no birds at all, this place is almost devoid of wildlife. Turns out water is necessary for life. I literally saw three species today, white crowned sparrows (6 of them), Ravens (numerous), and Woodhouse’s Scrub Jay (2), and one rabbit.
Roses 1.0 Van Life 