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The Landscape Arch is within the Arch Nation Park, 5 miles north from the Delicate Arch. Gaining the remaining energy and the day was just past noon time, we drove to the arch.

From the outlook, the rock formation trail head looked like the backs of the giant dinosaurs, the whole area was known as the Devil Garden. The rail head looped around in the parking lot, there were lot of people here than the Delicate Arch. Without having lunch yet, my daughter and I started another hike to the trail. There were several arches on this trails, the most known was the Landscape Arch (1.6 mile trail), then Double O Arch (4.2 miles further down). The trail to Landscape Arch was listed as moderately easy with some elevation gain; gravel surface, with short side trips to Tunnel and Pine tree Arches, not recorded in my hike. There was some shade along huge rock shadows along the trail, from there on to the remaining of 2/3 trail there was no shade cover. The weather in the high 80s, low 90s, with strong sun; the hike was slow in its pace without exerting much of the leg muscles but the heat was relentless, water bottle was highly recommended. There were more people on this trail for its easy access and slight hiking grade in the terrain.

We got to the vicinity of the arch, which was very much fenced off from a distance for preservation. We took a little rest under a massive boulder for its coolness. The ground was powder dusty on the trail in some areas. We returned to the trail head faster than the in-coming hike, and washed up the heat and exhaustion from the high sun from the wate fountain in the middle of the head trail. This was it, without further arch hiking for today.

We had some light lunch as the hot sun was high above, releasing its heat on the area. We headed out to the Windows Arch in the early afternoon.


Return to the Southwest
www.pbase.com/shaunwin/southwest

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