The next morning everyone met outside the motel and wished each other good luck. Our plan was Ronnie, Warren and I were heading towards Arches National Park. We went up Hwy 89 until we turned west on Hwy 12. Hwy 12 turned out to be a hidden jewel in the state of Utah.

You start out crossing these high meadows.

Pockets of red rock. Here’s another arch.

Here you get glimpses of the painted desert.

This is the kind of road they talk about when they describe the joys of riding and not knowing what’s over the next ridge.

Nice place…not much water.

Just beautiful!

Then all of a sudden the road drops into a sleep canyon and out of site. Very kewl!

Scenic view, time to stop.

Like a said, nice place but no water.

Here’s another drop into a canyon. This road is paved right on the rock!

It doesn’t get better than this!

This place is packed with hidden canyons and water ways.

Here’s Warren on the edge of the world.

Love the road through here.

Warren taking a high speed turn.

Then we saw the smoke. At first it was way off but our road was heading towards it.

We got closer and closer.

We finally stopped at this little dinner at a turn in the road and had a quick lunch. They had this little statue doing the point, I had to jump in.

This is a view of the fire from where we had lunch. We found out it was a controlled burn.

More red rock.

Nice roads. I’m sort of in a dream going through here. You can get lost in your mind in a place like this.

Just fantastic.

What another National Park? How did I miss this?

Uoooooooaa! More Pictures ahead.

Love this picture showing all three bikes. That’s Ronnie in the middle and Warren on the right.

You would be driving along and all of a sudden you would cross a dry creek bed. These were all over the place.

There was even a place that had ancient Indian carvings on the rocks.

I know it's hard to see, here is this better?

Here we stopped to try to get wet from the river. The river looked very inviting but we found it difficult to get to. We prevailed and got our heads wet.

Then we creep into no-mans land. Not much of anything out here.

Or here…

Behind Ronnie here you can see the trees along the river.

This guy had a great idea and decided to build his store inside of a big rock.

You can never get tired looking at this place. You might get tired of the heat, but not the views.

It was now getting towards late afternoon and I thought we would be to Arches Nt Park by now. Boy, did I plan that wrong. We will be lucky to make it by dark.

We speed down into Moab and went directly into Arches Park.

Especially nice riding here at sunset.

Sheer walls of rock were spread out all over this valley.

No wonder the Indians liked it here.

This is called the windows.

This place is amazing!

Then we get to the Delicate Arch. This is why I came to this park. When we pulled in we found out it’s a mile hike to the arch. Wow, we’ve been riding all day in the heat, I’m not sure I can do this. Ronnie said he was sitting out but Warren jumped off his bike and said, “I’m off to see the arch.” I thought I’ve come this far and I was going to see that arch if it killed me! So I head off after Warren. I started out well, but soon found out this path is leading up the side of a rock hill. That would be a mile uphill….OK, I can do this. I kept moving. About an hour later I finally reached the top for this view!

This is the view from the other direction.

This is the trail leading up to the Arch, no guard rail.

Utah sunset from atop the hill.

We couldn’t find anything to top that and it was a great way to end the day. We headed back into Moab and got a room. Next morning I was sore….Warren had blisters.

Today we are off towards Salt Lake City. It’s back up to hwy I-90.

Lots of desert to cross today.

Views of snow covered mountains told us we were working our way out of the hot desert.