.... who's the arch that's most delicate of all?

For those of you who have seen the delicate arch... Yes, you can actually go up to it.  But after 2 1/2 weeks of camping/hiking and the fact that I did hike the entire length of The Devil's Garden, I opted for just hiking the very small trail of the Delicate Arch Viewpoint rather than the very strenous climb to the arch itself.  I'm satisfied with my results for now because I really hope to go back there soon.  And if you look really closely in the color shot, you can see people at the arch.

Have a Happy and Safe Labor Day Weekend Everyone!!!!

We had some of the clearest and most beautiful nights while at Arches.  I think out of all the campsites it's the only place that we didn't get rained on every night we were there.  And because of this clear beautiful evening sky, we got clear beautiful sunsets.  Here are 3 of my favorite sunset shots from Arches.

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More Arches tomorrow and then I believe we will start our final state of my three week trip next week.  Hope I've at least lived up to some high expectations as of right now.  We still have 2 more stops to go!

We couldn't just abandon our journey just because the sun went away.  We had seen the map, we had read the names of all the arches in this pass and at the end there was a thing called "The Dark Angel."  And by joe, that just sounded freaking awesome!  We were on a mission, whether the sun was behind clouds or beaming down on us.  We had cameras, snacks, water and determination to get to that Dark Angel, whatever it may be.

As we journeyed we talked about film, photography, school, life and eventually started to wonder just where this thing could be?  It's name just oozed awesomeness, yet all we know is it's at the end of the trail.  We passed by fins and arches.  Climbed through "primitive" trail (aka you scale a rock the best you can without any kind of guide except stacked stones to reassure you you're still on the right path) and even got to walk across fins.  Which was awesome. 
It was about two people wide and one side you looked down and thought to yourself "Wow, if I fell off I just might break an arm or leg."  Then you looked down the other side and you thought to yourself "Oh dear God, Please don't let me fall off that side and die!"

But we had fun joking about it and trekking along all the same.  Finally we came to the Double O Arch (I know I have a better shot with my film) and we knew we were close.  Because on the map there was only one arch left before the Dark Angel and that was the Double O.  So we kept trekking and trekking and trekking, only to find that the Dark Angel was a huge Monolith that you could very well see from the Double O it was so big.  Yes, cool.  But at the same time, with a name like The Dark Angel we were expecting a little more....oomph to it. 

So we had a story to tell everyone back at camp and we can officially say out of the 8 of us there we were the only two who touched The Dark Angel.  I guess that's about as good as it can get.

Arches probably accounts for the largest number of favorite images.  I'm not sure it's because we were there so long or because it's just so freaking cool!  The first images I'll have up our from the Devil's Garden pass, which we woke up at 6 am just to get good morning light for this trail.  Unfortunately by about 8 the sun was behind the clouds for the rest of the day.  But we did get to shoot for a little while in the beautiful warm glow.

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Tomorrow more from devil's garden, only not as much light.

Thanks for looking!