One cannot have read Edward Abbey’s “Desert Solitaire” and not want to visit Arches if you’re in the area. In his first season there, he was the only NPS employee, and only from April to the end of September. In those early days, visitors were rare except at weekends. Even as long ago as 1995, the tarmac roads and handy access meant that the Park (upgraded from a National Monument since Abbey’s seasons there) was uncomfortably crowded. Guides you read now (2015) suggest that it is hard to get photos of the major landmarks without other people milling about – even in the summer when you’d think the heat would deter most people. We were fortunate enough to be there “off-season” and chose to visit Delicate Arch early enough to see the sun rise. That meant that we met no-one on the walk in; we had the arch to ourselves for the whole time we were there, and I don’t recall meeting anyone else on the walk back to the road, despite this being a Sunday.

It’s a very short walk from the road (less than an hour, even carrying Sarah, aged thirteen months, or (in my case) a heavy tripod and other photographic kit). It was also pleasantly cool (not to say chilly on the uphill walk, a bit warmer on the way back down) which made a change from the previous day when we had baked on our visit to other parts of the park. Because the walk was quicker than we’d been led to expect, we had a bit of a wait for the light. The sky was clear, so we didn’t get the sort of pink clouds I’d have liked, but the sunrise was spectacular nonetheless with the sun lighting up the distant cliffs well before it hit the arch itself. It is supposed to be possible (I’ve later learned) to climb down the cliff for a view of the sunrise side of the arch, but as this is something like a 150m drop-off, it didn’t appear possible/sensible in the dark.

We were nearing the end of our trip by this point, and spent the rest of the day driving back nearer to Salt Lake. In my usual fashion, I was not wanting to stop for fuel until near the bottom of the tank, so when we found signs indicating that our chosen route was unsurfaced for some considerable distance ahead (I had failed to appreciate the significance of the dashed lines in our road Atlas) we didn’t really have enough fuel left to go back and fill up at the last gas station we’d passed. This generated some earache and some interesting driving (we weren’t supposed to take our hired RV off the tarmac surfaced roads…). Being an automatic, I couldn’t just turn the engine off and coast down the far side as I would at home, and the first town didn’t have the gas station I had confidently expected. There were a few anxious moments running on “empty” before we found fuel. This then took us into the Wasatch for some very different scenery for the last couple of days of our trip.