Utah has great parks!

    Arches National Park is just outside of Moab, Utah. The whole area is surrounded by red rocks. The sun lights them up like fire at certain times of the day. Arches is a very busy park, but it's spread out so it feels easy to find a quiet spot among the arches, fins and sandstone formations. We did some amazing hikes, especially the double O, and fiery furnace hikes. They both require scrambling up, and around mountains of slick rock. The fiery furnace requires a permit, you have to watch a video and understand what is required for the trail. We also studied you tube videos and read up on AllTrails since they say it is very easy to get disoriented in the fins.  The hikes were beautiful, challenging and very fun!! This is what the fiery furnace looks like from the viewing area.

This is one of the trails. We slid through narrow passages, we "V" walked over crevices and crab walked through channels.

This is the trail going up to the double O arch. You can see the people behind me on the trail.   

This is Double O arch. There is a smaller arch below the larger one.

Delicate arch is one of the most famous arches in Utah.

                                                                                    

  We keep seeing eyes everywhere we go!                    

                                But these are made of stone!                                                     

Canyonlands National Park is also beautiful, with amazing vistas that are hard to capture in pictures.

After the parks we headed to the northern part of Salt Lake City. We did some sightseeing and did some final shopping before heading to the Yellowstone area. We went to Antelope Island, which is in the middle of the Great Salt Lake. Unfortunately the biting flies had hatched and the animals were mostly in the higher parts of the island. But we enjoyed a beautiful sunset.

The next day we headed to downtown Salt Lake to visit Temple Square and to work on a little geneology. The spring flowers were amazing, the gardens were beautiful!

For something different, we decided on a  waterfall hike the next day. We climbed a few miles up a canyon and enjoyed listening to the stream and seeing all the young families and their children out for an evening hike.

The next day was a travel day again and we can finally say that we have now made it to the West Yellowstone area!!!! We will be moving into the Old Faithful employee campground on Sunday. We checked it out today and shoveled out some snow so that our camper will fit. We are  excited to be here. It has been a wonderful journey, but we are ready to get settled for the next few weeks, learn our new jobs, and begin to explore this amazing natural wonderland.