The West -- Delicate Arch
Late May of 2006 we went traveled to Utah. After my first trip to the desert in Arizona and Nevada, I knew we would have a great time around the Arches National Park area. We were not disappointed. It may be hard for those who have not been there to believe that the desert could be so beautiful. For those that have, there is no doubt. The first photo above is probably my favorite picture of me. We had been hanging around Delicate Arch for a while after taking a morning hike up. There are a lot of people around the area, but I got a quick chance to go out and get a photo of me by myself in the arch. My wife snapped a shot of me facing the camera and then I turned to soak in the area one more time. I had no idea she took the photo above until I came back over to where she was. She showed it to me and when we got back to the hotel that night we downloaded the photos into the computer. An amazing photo.
The hike to Delicate Arch is shown below. If you go, do this hike if you can. A late day hike gives you the best lighting, but it is more hot. Click on any photo to see the larger image.
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Moving forward toward the arch, you see more arches off to the left. Two are shown here.
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Finally, the arch appears suddenly as you move past the cliffs. Behind us is a 100 foot drop.
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Tina gets some chill time since there were folks at the arch.
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A great picture of her looking after folks moved away.
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A fun shot of her in the arch.
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Cropped part of the same shot.
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I also got Tina to take a shot of me at the arch from this odd angle. Just days before we were there the incident happened where a guy climbed the arch. At that time, there were no regulations regarding climbing the arch. We could clearly see the rope damage that he and his party caused as they roped back down off of the arch. You could also see his chalk marks even though he used rust colored chalk. He climbed right above me up this face. The rope damage he and his group caused is at the very top of the arch. It is too bad that he damaged the arch and I am glad the NPS banned climbing of this arch shortly after he damaged the arch.
It is cool that you can go almost anywhere you want in the park, but why some idiot would climb Delicate Arch and damage it by roping off of it is amazing and sad.
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Hiking back down you can see the trail back to the care clearly. At the top right of this photo is a group of greenish tinted rocks. The parking area is right in front of those rocks.
Clicking the photo will bring up a large 2532 x 1288 pixel photo.
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The day before we took the trail to the arch, we went to the other overlook just to get a quick view of the arch. I was curious if you could get there from the other overlook too, but you most certainly cannot. You can see the arch at the top of the picture just left of center. When you think about how big the arch is, you get an idea of how big the sheer face cliffs are just below it.
Clicking the image will show a 1400 x 677 pixel (203 kb) photo that I stitched together using Photoshop.
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Colorado
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Garden of the Gods Park in Colorado Springs.
The photo below is two photos stitched together in Photoshop.
Click this for a huge impressive 684 kb image.
You can see two climbers on the right side of the structure at left.
Here is a 2003 picture of us on Pikes Peak.
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There is nothing like a good day in the woods. Ignore your cell phone and relax.
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