As it turned out, by the time we reached the Visitor Center, the rain seemed to have cleared out. We'd been racing to make it there before the back country office closed because we'd misjudged the distance between Moab and Needles. (You'd think after all these years we'd know it was 75 miles and not 35 miles!) By the time we realized our mistake, we were out of range for cell phone service, so we had no way to call. Luckily, we made it with 5 minutes to spare.

It was 3:30pm and we still had to register, drive to the trailhead and hike 4.2 miles to our campsite. The volunteer checking us in said, "You've got a ways to hike still!"
Me: "It's only 4 miles, right? That's about 2 hours."
Volunteer: "Well I can't hike it that fast."

Well, no problem that I could see. Even if we did get caught in the dark, we had headlamps and we'd been on the trails many times before. So, we got to the Elephant Hill trailhead, parked the car and headed out.

This is a view from the trail. In the foreground of the photo you can see some of the biological soil crust that is so important in the desert ecosystem.