Today got off to a fabulous start and has just stayed on that track. Shortly after waking up I got a Taco Cat T-shirt for Father’s Day! After just a few more minutes I got a nice breakfast on the patio of the hotel. Then we only had to drive 10 minutes rather than the several hours most days of this trip entail. We stopped at the Visitor’s Center of Arches N.P. to pick up the ticket for our ranger led hike of the Fiery Furnace section of the park. We stamped our passports and picked up a couple souvenirs: Molly’s been collecting postcards and I picked up a couple posters for my classroom.
Since we had arrived a bit early we stopped at a couple viewpoints on the way in. Everything we’ve seen has been stunning and since there really is no way to describe it you’ll have to check out Molly’s post for pictures or come visit yourself! At the parking area for the Fiery Furnace we lotioned and booted ourselves up and joined up with the 20 other people on the tour and our leader Ranger Mike.
After a quick overview of the guidelines for the hike we descended into the coolest, both in awesomeness and temperature, part of Arches. Since there is really no way to do it justice in words I’ll just mention a few of the highlights. Throughout the tour our leader stopped to talk about the animal and plant life in the area. It’s amazing to me the depth and breadth of knowledge that he had about nearly everything. We asked lots of questions about everything as we toured and he always had a detailed answer ready.
At one point Ranger Mike discussed the spadefoot toad, a species that is rare to see since they breed, develop, and live their lives relatively quickly due to the dearth of water available in the desert. Coincidentally, we had seen several of them and many tadpoles yesterday during our hike at Horseshoe Canyon. We didn’t really think much of them since we’d seen plenty of toads before, but looking back realized how cool it was (and were glad we snapped a couple pictures of them)!
At the conclusion of the tour we gathered under Surprise Arch, which lives up to its name. We climbed up a passageway between rock fins to find it spanning the top of a small room. Ranger Mike talked about his path to becoming a ranger and an experience he had at the park when he was younger that he had “folded up and carried with him” for times when he needed motivation and inspiration. I could easily understand what he meant since I had done exactly the same thing on our hike of Twin Sister Peaks last summer. There is a magic to the parks, monuments, and other natural areas of the country that is so special it must be experienced to be understood. After today Arches NP has managed to capture a piece of my heart.
