Hey,You're From Idaho! - Monday, March 28

We woke to slight cloud overcast and some upriver winds. Today was Fiery Furnace day, which could be just fine with and overcast sky. Camp was made ready and Baka was tied so he had plenty of water, food, shade and all the dog necessities. We left camp about 8:40 am and hit Arches exactly when Linda had planned.


Snow of the Butte

Fiery Furnace is past the Delicate Arch turn off by about two miles. As we approached we noticed some Idaho plates on the car in front of us, in fact they were from Kootenai County. Every turnoff we figured they would leave us but they kept on leading until we reached the parking lot where we were to start our tour. They parked and we pulled in next to them. As soon as they got out of their car we mentioned the plates and that we were from Post Falls. They were from Hayden; in fact he was a teacher at Woodland Middle School. Their names were Deb and Lynn, she was a nurse, and they told us they had been coming down to this area for the past several spring breaks. It was nice to chat, but soon Ranger Ben gathered all 25 of us together and started the talk.

The area we hiked was beautiful and consisted of many fins of sandstone. These fins made a labyrinth of trails which Ranger Ben lead us through.


Ranger Ben

According to Ranger Ben the fins were created by salt being deposited at the bottom of a ocean and then being covered with sediments. After a whole bunch of years the fault plains shifted and pushed up the deposited salts causing the deposited sandstone material to up heave and expose the salts to the environment. Once exposed then the salt washed away leaving the fins of sandstone. There are fins at the Fiery Furnace area and then up the Salt Valley there are fins at Devils Garden. Ranger Ben explained this much better and actually drew pictures in the sand, which he erased immediately after he was finished. This must be a Ranger Rule or something like never let anyone else see your drawings least they might know that they were wrong or something.

As we hiked with our group, we learned many things and Ranger Ben patiently answered all the questions posed to him.


Bug on the Rocks

Some of the things we learned were that packrats pee on stuff making it into a hard substance that they create their home out of and their home is called a midden.


The Skull

There are standards used by Arches Rangers to designate if an arch is an arch. There are nine types of arches; freestanding, bridge, and another type was mentioned. There are four tests an arch must pass to be considered an arch. They must be at least 3 feet wide in any direction.


Walk Through Arch

They must be naturally made, not caused by man. They must be made out of a continuous rock, they cannot be formed by rocks tipping on rocks, and we cannot remember the last test. We hiked and Ranger Ben talked and soon we were in an area where we could see Twin Arch, it was a good place to rest and eat a bite, but soon we were off again.


Kissing Turtles

Ranger Ben pointed out one of a whole bunch of stuff but there was so much I can’t write it all down.

The tour took about 2 ½ hours and we wound around for about 3 miles, but we actually never got more that a mile from our car. In fact at one point we stopped and looked at Surprise Arch


Surprise Arch

and found out that we were about one hundred yards from the road we followed to drive into the area.

At the end we said good by to Bev and Lynn, hopped in the Jeep and wound our way back to Goose Island and our dog Baka. Next order of the day was to get some lunch and gas in Moab. We ate at Pasta Jays, I had the marinara on pasta, and Linda had a half sandwich and salad. It was real good and not too expensive. We tried to get our email but I could not get the laptop to cooperate. During this time Baka sat outside of the café and met about everyone in Moab. He was a big hit and of course he loved it.

We got gas and drove up river to find the NIC crew. They were about 28 miles up at a BLM site and when we go there they were playing croquet. We talked for about 45 minutes exchanging travel stories and seeing what plans each group had for the next few days. When we left they were still playing croquet, in fact they were on the same hole that they were on when we arrived. Baka got into trouble while we were there. All he wanted to do was eat cow poop and roll in every pile he could find. We had to tie him up to keep him from becoming a stink bomb for the ride home. We left the group and drove home, are dinner of left overs and went to bed, another Moab day under our belt.