Trip to Arches and Bryce National Parks

On Thursday April 17, my friend Chris Chang ("Chang," for those of you who have heard me talk about him, or have met him) called me up and said, "let's drive down to Arches and Bryce!" Chang has been trying to get me to go with him for years. I've never been in the mood to make that kind of drive, but for some reason, it sounded good this weekend! SO, Chang flew out (he works for United, so gets to fly super cheap) and we headed out Saturday Morning 4/19. I had it in my head that this trip was a lot shorter than it was, so we ended up on the road for quite a while on this trip but it was pretty cool.

Here are some pics from Bryce - 4/19 (I have a bunch but I REALLY need PhotoShop to fix them up right):

Hoo-Doos (weird name, I just call them Spires)

C'est Moi! (Bryce was PACKED with foreigners! French, German, Japanese, Belgian and Swiss -we think - neither of us recognized the accent???)

Chang

Antelope off the side of the road - this picture does not do justice this small to how close I really was to him. He did not care!

Bryce was very cool, but Arches was AMAZING! I swear, if I had the means I could live in Moab (I'd need a private Cessna, really good wireless internet, solid cell service and a killer mountain bike, and I'd be good!) The wind was UNREAL! I'm not kidding, it neary blew me off a cliff when I was taking this first picture, I have the jammed finger and scraped shin and knee to prove it! Seriously, kids and old people could not go out to where the arch was because of the wind, it was SO strong. Other than that, the day was beautiful, as you can see...

Delicate Arch



Balance Rock






So, we drove a ridiculous amount of time and miles (Probably on the order of 800 miles and 12 hours in-car time) to hit these 2 spots in 2 days, but it was really fun. I don't know if I'd do it so fast again, as I'd want to explore more of both places, but it was cool for what it was!