We started today by checking out of our motel in Monticello. I was more than happy to get out of there because the motel’s wifi connection was truly abysmal, and being without internet access makes me cranky. We moved to Moab for the night—about an hour to the north and right outside the entrance to Arches National Park.

After checking out, we drove back to Canyonlands to visit the Island in the Sky section of the park, since we’d heard it was quite different from the Needles area we’d seen a couple days ago (see Lori’s write-up of our Needles experience here). That turned out to be an understatement as the two areas feel like entirely different parks. Whereas Needles is mostly longish hikes over rough terrain while looking up at rock spire formations, Island in the Sky is short, easy walks on the edges of sheer cliffs (my favorite!) while looking down into expansive canyons far below.

We did the Grand View trail first, and it really does live up to its name. I haven’t been to the Grand Canyon (yet—we should make it over there next week or so), but the views here are more or less how I imagined it’d look. The cliffs at Canyonlands are only about 1/3 as high as those at the Grand Canyon though, so I guess I have a feeble imagination.

After spending most of the afternoon at Canyonlands, we drove over to Arches National Park, planning to hike up to Delicate Arch for sunset. We arrived at the trailhead about an hour before sunset, which left us plenty of time to hike the 1.5 miles uphill to the arch. From the parking lot, we could see that this was a popular place—it looked like the hill was crawling with people. Upon reaching the arch, we saw lots of photographers had already staked out their spots. The cloudless sky today was less than dramatic, so unfortunately we were treated to a lackluster sunset, but we all got our shots nonetheless.

As the sun went down, Lori and I debated whether or not we wanted to wait up at the arch for a couple hours post-sunset, until the Milky Way eventually became visible in the night sky. While dark-sky photos of Delicate Arch would almost certainly be fantastic, we didn’t really want to hike back in absolute darkness with just a couple tiny flashlights. So we compromised and decided not to wait for nighttime shots of the arch, but instead we’d stop at some other feature that was near the main road on the drive back to our hotel. Ironically by the time we’d made the decision, it was late enough that most of our walk back was in near-total darkness anyway. So that was fun.

After eventually making it back to the car, we settled on stopping at Balanced Rock, since it was on the way out of the park, and only a few hundred feet from a parking lot. When we finally made it to the rock, the Milky Way was clearly visible in the sky. We set up in the dark, and proceeded to spend about an hour painting Balanced Rock with a flashlight while taking long exposures with our cameras in an attempt to create something interesting (see below for my best result).

Photos from the day (click for larger versions):

Lori, again standing entirely too close to the edge of a cliff on the Canyonlands Grand View trail.

Looking through Mesa Arch at Canyonlands National Park.

The quintessential Arches National Park photo of Delicate Arch at sunset. There were about 30 other photographers at the same spot, taking the same shot.

Balanced Rock at Arches National Park with the Milky Way behind. I lit the right side of the rock with a flashlight to create this shot.