Day 6: Arches National Park

Last night I did a bit of research on breakfast places that opened before 7 am. Our plan was to leave by 7 am in order to arrive at Arches National Park before 7:30am. We settled on a coffee shop that was within walking distance of the hotel that opened at 6:30 am. After a quick breakfast, we loaded up our bikes and headed to the park. The park was spectacular. I was amazed at how large it was. Our first stop was at the Visitor Centre. We verified the hiking trails we would doing and then set out to the trail heads. Our first trail was to Broken Arch. The hike probably took just over an hour. Luckily, part of the hike was in the shade. We only hiked to the arch itself, even though the trail continued. We turned back after a short rest at the arch. Our next destination was Delicate Arch Viewpoint. Although we would have liked to have hiked to Delicate Arch, it would have been a 3 hour affair. So we just gazed on the arch from afar. Our final point of interest in the park was Balanced Rock. It certainly lived up to its name!

Our excursion into and around the park took about 4 hours. We could have definitely spent a few days exploring the park. We may return to the park in the future to continue our explorations.

Our ride back to Ouray was mostly uneventful. We tried to stop only for very short breaks for water and snacks. We knew that we had to return as soon as possible to hand over some luggage for transporation to Denver. When we arrived at our chalet, Ben was already waiting for us. We quickly packed up the things that would travel back to Denver with him, chatted a few minutes, and said our goodbyes. We milled around for another 15 minutes or so and then headed back out again. Matt wanted to get one more ride on the Million Dollar Highway before returning home.

There was a little miscommunication regarding our ride. Remember the heartstopping ascent with no guardrails and crazy hairpin turns? Matt rode ahead of me and at one point disappeared into the distance. When I crested a hill near the scenic outlook that we had stopped at on Monday, I had no idea where he was. So I turned into the scenic outlook. Of course, that's when I saw that Matt had actually continued up the road instead of making the turn like I did. What a comedy of errors. I circled back out of the parking area and headed up again. Halfway up a turn, wasn't Matt on his way back down again. We spoke on our bluetooth communicators for a few seconds and agreed that I would turn around and meet him at the scenic outlook. I had a little misadventure when trying to turn around on a huge gravel area: yes, I laid it down. Luckily, I wasn't even moving when it happened. If nothing else, it was just embarassing to have to wait until some nice people stopped to help me out. They were all concerned that I may have hurt myself, and were relieved when I said everything was fine and they saw that I was in full riding gear. They helped me get my bike back up, made sure I was able to start it up and ride, and kept an eye out on traffic for me. Thank goodness for nice people!

I gingerly made my way back to where Matt was waiting. I told him what happened (he guessed anyway, based on how long it took for me to turn around). We decided to head back to the chalet. Enough excitement for one day. When we got back, Matt gave the bikes a thorough cleaning. We had picked up quite a bit of mud when we travelled through Arches National Park.

Our final dinner will be at the chalet. We had leftover ingredients from all the other times we ate in. So why not? Good food and good company. What a fine way to spend an evening.

Tomorrow we will be heading back to Denver to drop off our bikes with Ben. Our Colorado adventure will come to an end. How sad. =(

Day 6 Route, or at least the Arches National Park portion of it:

View along Broken Arch Trail:

Broken Arch:

Delicate Arch panorama:

Delicate Arch:

Balanced Rock: