Arches National Park with Mollye

So I have a niece, Mollye, who’s a terrific young lady.  She’s got a degree in biology, she likes to spend time in the great outdoors and she has a passion for educating young people about the outdoors.  This summer Mollye is working in Moab for a company that does just this.  While I was in Moab, she managed to get a couple of days off so we spent an afternoon together at Arches National Park and then went out to dinner with Fred in tow.

Arches National Park has been experiencing significant crowds and they’ve begun to close the park to more vehicles at various times of the day until the park clears out a bit. So of course on a Saturday at 12:30 PM the park was closed.  But no worries, because there is a back entrance to Arches via a Bureau of Land Management area so off we headed. We decided to do a hike to Tower Arch, about 3 miles round-trip. The views were fabulous and the hike was worth it to arrive at Tower Arch.

After our hike, we drove into Arches and did the touristy stuff – we walked to Sand Dune Arch, stopped at the overlook for Delicate Arch – the most photographed arch of all and which is on the Utah state license plate, saw North and South Windows and Double Arch.  All impressive and beautiful.