After stopping in Moab, we were glad to explore the town. It was a cute town with some interesting small local shops and lots of hotels. You may have noticed from previous blogs that we had had a lot of Subways so we were keen to get away from chains. We went off the main street and found a nice independent Thai restaurant. It was a nice meal except for my red peppers – I tasted that they were off but for some reason I didn’t complain (Why??!). I was to regret this the next day when my boyfriend and I got food poisoning – within minutes of each other – in the middle of a national park. Now the thing about National Parks is that there aren’t many toilets, being in the middle of nowhere and all.
Without making this one of “those” blog posts, I will say that I was very glad of the toilet facilities in the park, even though I had written them off as gross when we first arrived. Let’s just say the rare lichen that they told us not to walk on would have been more than walked on, were it not for the well-placed toilet facilities.
We headed back into Moab to chill out and be nearer to toilets for a while. Upon heading back to the park we were able to get round most of the main arches. Arches National Park is stunning, with unusual red rock features and views of snowy mountains in the distance. We saw North and South Window arch, delicate arch, tunnel arch, pine arch and landscape arch.
While we were walking out to Landscape arch, we were lucky enough to see several deer scampering about in the bush. Interestingly, we saw a sign saying that there are mountain
lions around and if one attacks you, you should fight back!! I’m not sure how I would go about fighting a mountain lion. Thankfully we didn’t meet one.
We did however bump into a friendly Canadian guy. He was lovely and we chatted about politics and the recession etc and in the course of our conversation he showed us a small pack of breath mints and said they were the only thing that worked for his dry mouth. He showed us that they were made in England, and funnily enough they are made in a town about 10 miles from where I grew up! I’ve never heard of them before or since, but a Canadian man we met in America told me about them! 🙂
The park is fairly large so I would recommend finding a map (in most guidebooks) and driving to the carpark nearest the arches you wish to visit. I enjoyed the North/South Windows, but it is possible to get around most of the park in a day. There is an entrance fee for cars of $10.
Fairly glad to leave Moab after our food-poisoning exploits, we drove North-West to Salina, which would provide an overnight stop and get us in a reasonable place for visiting Bryce Canyon.
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