Sunburns, Rashes, and Dusty Shoes

 As one could imagine our trip is not entirely sunshine and rainbows, sometimes it's sunburns and rashes. After leaving the Grand canyon on our way to arches National Park, we discovered that we were heavily sunburned and (presumably from our sun exposure) had began to rash. Due to this, we unfortunately didn't do much at Arches. Pitifully, we mostly just drove through the park and got out at the big scenic areas to snap a couple photos. Devil's Garden and the Balanced Rock stood out the most to us, but we thought that Delicate Arch was not exactly what it was chopped up to be. We thoroughly enjoyed Arches though and despite not giving it the time of day, we do think that it's a great park for people who are not on the brink of heat stroke. 

We nursed our sunburns and rashes at what we found out to be a horse campground that we had reserved months back. It became a common theme for us to realize that there were a few holes in our planning and we figured we should have probably double checked some of our ideas. We realized that we were one of only two campsites that had any shade (which had been a real struggle with us in campsites past). But, we broke our camp stove. I guess it's just trail mix for us now. We had great views at our campsite and it was not very crowded so that was good. Also, no horses checked in!

The next morning we set out for Canyonlands. It was just a quick 30 minutes from Arches, but due to our subpar condition (and again a lack of planning), we only had the morning at the park. So again we mostly drove through the park getting out at Mesa Arch, Grandview point and Green River overlook. We recommend that everyone go to the Island in the sky Visitor Center and section of the park. Canyonlands had very unique views with four distinct areas within the park that you could discover, but we adored the island in the sky section as you could look deep down into all of the canyons that the park has to offer. 

About this time, we were recollecting vacations past, connecting similarities of views and experiences to our current trip. We kept on trucking down the road to Capital Reef. We were very excited for this park because of what we had learned previously at Guadalupe National Park and Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Both of those areas used to be giant coral reefs and we assumed by Capital Reef's name that it too used to be a coral reef. As we drove deeper and deeper into the depths of the canyons, we found that the majority of the park flowed along the Fremont River. To our surprise, the bottom of the park was covered in a variety of trees and grasses, even some orchards!

One of our first stops along the road was to go to the Gifford house, which was an old ranching house where they now sell pie and ice cream made right in the canyon. To rid you if your suspense, we had chocolate and vanilla ice cream but no pie because it honestly didn't look that good. Then it was off to our campsite, which was beautiful! With several trees, grasses and the Fremont River we were excited to finally escape the hot dusty rocks that marked our past campsites. As it was 95°F we were very happy to find some shade and we relaxed, planning the next couple of days.

In the morning we hiked up along the Fremont River! This was a very exciting but short hike which offered a lot of pretty river views against the red and white rock cliffs. Then, we did the Hickman's Bridge hike up to a natural 133 ft arch in the canyons. About this time our feet were caked with dust (in perfectly straight lines from our tevas) and we decided to kick back a little bit and relax. We sat in the shade through the hottest part of the day before we kept driving to our next campsite at a nearby national forest. We got quite a bit lost along the way, but eventually set up camp even if we never found the right spot. 

Our sunburns are slowly fading away, the rashes are holding strong, and we are hoping to find a creek to rinse of our feet in soon. But otherwise, life is pretty good! We're on a 3-month vacation seeing the most stunning views the world has to offer, so how bad can it really be?