After walking back up and down the steps into our building from the 8,038,263,910th trip to the car and loading our stuff, we hit the road. We managed to leave exactly when I wanted to – we had reservations at Hanging Lake, and I would be damned if we were late. We went to the new bagel shop – Call Your Mother. I had a maple salt and pepper bagel. YUM! Oh, with apple pie cream cheese. SO GOOD. Matt had some sandwich with eggs and avocado and latkes. Also amazing. This place opened last week, and I think we were both pleasantly surprised at how good it was. 

We had an uneventful drive to Hanging Lake. We stopped at the rest area to pee, because the website had said that there were no bathrooms at the trailhead. It was probably the most beautiful rest stop we’ve ever been to, all fall leaves crunching underfoot and the river in all its glory… 

Turns out, they’re serious about reservations at the lake, there was a guy checking and opening the gate by hand. We parked, walked past the bathrooms (oops), and headed up the trail. 

For a trail that’s got 1,000 ft. of vert in just over a mile, it was super chill. And beautiful. It shadows a pretty little stream the whole way up, so there are all kinds of waterfalls to look at. Towards the top, the water literally comes out of the rock, and everything is covered in this gorgeous green moss… The pictures just don’t do it justice. 

Talk about pictures not doing justice to something… We came around a corner and there was the lake. Talk about spectacular! I’d keep trying to describe it, but words fail me. I’ll leave it at that. 

On our way back down, we took the other little spur trail to Spouting Rock. It was, quite literally, a waterfall spouting out from the middle of a rock face. Pretty damn cool. You could walk behind the falls, too. Another awesome experience. 

We made our way back to the car and continued on our way. We went to Palisade to the brewery for lunch, where Bobby met us for food and beer. Good times. 

We pulled in to the Lazy Lizard and checked in. We got a private room, which is little more than a full size bed with about a foot of space around it. This one has a little closet like space and a chair and mini-desk. And the bathrooms are about five steps away, so that’s nice. 

I was falling asleep at like 6:15, so we decided to go to the grocery and find crack pretzels. Not only did they have the normal ones, they also had cinnamon and sugar ones, which ended up being my dinner. Talk about crack! OMG! So good!

I slept forever that night. According to Coros, 10 hours and 37 minutes worth. So nice. 

I went across the street to the Wicked Brew truck for coffee and brought it back to the hostel. Yum. We had some bagels for breakfast, then decided to see if we could get reservations for Arches NP, and we could. We decided on 2:00 pm, then scrambled to figure out what else to do until then… 

We found a hike to some arches that are NOT in the national park, gathered some stuff, and off we went. 

Corona and Bowtie arch were pretty cool. There were a bunch of people, but not SO many. Wasn’t terrible. On the way back to the trailhead, we took the other spur to Pinto arch. Not as cool. But really, arches are cool no matter what. 

We munched on some salami and cheese (and more crack pretzels) when we got back to the car, and headed to the national park. 

We decided to head all the way to the far end of the road first and make our stops on the way back. We parked at the end and hiked out to Landscape Arch. 

Wow. That was amazing. We caught it just at the right time so the sun was kind of behind it, lighting up the underneath a bit – spectacular! I must’ve take fifty million pictures, I just could NOT get enough! On our way back to the car, we hit two more arches, but they were hardly anything to write home about…

After a while, we moved along, figuring there was still one more stop to make. We parked, and headed to Delicate Arch. 

I LOVE this hike. It’s short, not too hard, and has some amazing views. And Delicate Arch is, well… Awesome. There were plenty of people up there, but not so many that we couldn’t get a single picture…

The hike back to the car was uneventful, and we went back to the hostel to shower.

Dinner was at Miguel’s Baja Grill, located in an alley type building in the middle of town. We had discovered it years ago, and it seems like everyone else has, too, now. Thankfully, the wait was maybe 20 minutes, and the food was just as good as we remembered it. 

Then, back to the hostel and bed. 

The next morning, I woke up a little earlier than the day before, so I read a book in bed for a bit. It’s really nice to not have anything to get up for. Eventually, I got tired of laying there and went to Wicked Brew again for coffee. 

When I got back, we briefly talked about what to do today, and we decided on Canyonlands NP. No reservations required, and the place is always cool to look at. Especially Mesa Arch – that’s my favorite. 

Stupidly, we didn’t fill the gas tank before heading out. We had a quarter tank, which is plenty to get pretty much anywhere in the city… By the time we drove the 30ish miles to the park entrance, we realized we oopsed pretty good. The little orange light wasn’t on yet, but it sure was close, and it was still 12 miles to the other end of the park. 

Grudgingly, we decided we’d try to get to Mesa Arch and turn around if the light came on before then. 

Luckily, it didn’t. We hiked out to the arch and oohed and aahed with everyone else out there. Okay, it wasn’t sunrise, but it was still damned pretty. 

We didn’t press out luck and turned around there without going all the way to the end of the road. We did stop at the two Shafer Trail overlooks, which we don’t think we’ve ever done before. The highlight was some dumbass in an RV making his way up the switchbacks. He kept making three point turns to get around them… Idiot. 

Back to town we went without incident and got gas. We stopped by the grocery and got some sandwiches for lunch and ate them back at the hostel.

Stay tuned for more of the story!