It is Octover 7th, just under a month since we started, and we are officially out of time and heading back. We made it as far north and west as Billings, Montana, where we docked at the mothership (REI) and ate chicken fried steak with fried eggs for lunch. Crater Lake, Oregon, and Redwoods, California, will have to wait for another trip. Six weeks seemed like all the time in the world. Now it seems like we haven’t even left the southwest. Yes, Wyoming is 60 degrees colder than Yuma, where my aunt said it was 107, but the landscape is still scrubby sagebrush, grassy prairie, rocky cliffs and pine forests.
Winston said that he didn’t see what was so great about Arches. A woman overheard him and said, “Well, someday, they won’t be here anymore.”
The next day we got up at dawn and headed up a popular trail. This window is where we stopped for breakfast. Troy has a kit with a tiny burner to make tea or oatmeal.
Winston relented and said that this place was pretty great.
The cave behind Wyatt is actually an arch, and someday, that arch will be the one people come to see.
Can you see Wyatt down in the crack? His hand is level with Tristan’s foot and his face a bit below. He saw a walking stick that someone had dropped and was off like a marmot in pursuit. It looked like he would be crushed, which I know is ridiculous, so I didn’t say anything, but Troy made him come back up.
The trail went along the tops of these ‘fins’ of rock. As you can imagine, the kids were thrilled.
And finally, the destination: the Double-O arch.
There were crowds coming up by the time we were heading back, so it’s a good thing we got a last-minute campsite in the park campground near the trailhead.
This was also the only campsite where we got to sit around a communal fire and chat with other campers. I imagined doing a lot of that, but it has not been the case.
Three of the nobs on the hilltop are children. Another rock fin ran through the campground and everyone went out to watch the sunset. Never mind the sheer 25-foot drop on either side.
The campground with the moon and Broken Arch in the background.
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