Day 22: Canyonlands National Park and Arches National Park, day 1

We left Capitol Reef and found a grocery store on the way, yay! I broke down and bought the Bad Guys dvd for the kids since they had it at the store. Blake proclaimed, "It's a great day to be a Duchette!" He was so happy to get the dvd and grapes too! ha

Then we went to Canyonlands National Park.  We went to the Island in the Sky district and first saw Shafer Canyon. Then since it was about 90 degrees and getting hotter, we decided to go to the end of the park and do the longer hike we had planned for today. It was Grand View and starts out with a great view and ends with an even better panoramic view of the park. We climbed to the top of the rocks at the end and got a bird's eye view and some nice shade. We were glad we did this hike first because it got up to 107 degrees today!

On our way back through the park, we hiked to Mesa Arch, a short loop trail to the arch. It was pretty and I can imagine even more so at sunrise. Since we were pretty hot, we visited the visitor's center and headed to our campground. We are staying at Portal RV in Moab and it's beautiful! The sites are so clean with peastone at each site and cement pads for the tables. The bathrooms are new and so clean, and there are two pools and pickle ball courts. We cooled off in the AC for a while then had dinner and went into Arches National Park afterwards. We originally had a timed reservation for 2-3pm today, but didn't make it, so we went in after 5pm when you don't need a reservation. We hiked Park Avenue down between many formations including the Courthouses. Then we went down the Windows Road and hiked around Turret Arch, the North and South Windows, and Double Arch. We got to see the sunset while we were in the park and still made it back for a quick swim before the pools closed. Now we're heading to bed so we can get up early for some more Arches hikes!