Tuesday, September 15: Enterprise Car Rental picked us up at the campground at 8:15 in the morning. Once we had the car rental squared away we returned to the campground and loaded our gear for the day and headed for Arches National Park (about 10 miles away). The skies were just clearing from the rain showers we had through most of the night.

For the first hour Jim was chasing sun beams to get good photos.

We drove the main scenic drive through the park for most of the day. We took a spur off to see the Windows area and hiked to see the “Garden of Eden” overlook  …

Balanced Rock

… and three window arches (North, South, and Turret).

 The sun continued to play games with us all day however we were glad the rain held off for most of the day.

We also took the spur to view “Delicate Arch” however we were not able to drive to the overlooks for that arch since the rains has caused the road to flood and the park had closed it off.

Then we drove to the end of the drive to an area called “Devil’s Garden” and hiked to see “Tunnel Arch” and “Pine Tree Arch.” Pine Tree Arch was my favorite of the ones we were able to see and we found a nice quiet spot to have our lunch just on the other side of the arch.

Pine Tree Arch

Our lunch stop view

On the way back through the scenic drive we stopped to see the “Fiery Furnace” area and got back to the car just ahead of some more rain drops.

By then it was about 3:00 and we decided to head back to Moab. Once back to town we stopped for a coffee break and some shopping on the main route through town.

After that we had dinner at a nice restaurant just across from our campground. We found a table on the back deck and enjoyed the warm (but not hot for once) temperatures for a relaxing supper time. Once again we finished just in time to avoid more rain drops.

From there we headed back to other side of town and took a drive along the Colorado River for a few miles.