Zion to Arches National Park. Or from a fire to an inferno.

Utah is pretty. Mountains and red rock formations in all shapes and sizes. So many different rock formations that you can play the cloud game with the rocks. "Ooo. I see a bear on his back with a fish in his paw. Wow, that looks like an elephant and a rainbow." It was really that ridiculous. 

Anyway, once you've seen so much beauty and so many rocks you sort of become immune to it. "Yep, it's still pretty and the rocks are still red and shaped like animals." That was how the drive from one national park to the next went. 

Going into Arches we knew that it would be hot. But apparently the temperatures in Zion were about 20-25 degrees hotter than normal, and the temperatures in Arches were also about 15 degrees hotter than normal. Clearly one of us was going to die (from a heat stroke or murder, it's hard to say) if we stayed the entire three nights we had planned in Arches. So we called an audible and decided to stay one night and move onto the Rockies for the two additional nights. It was only supposed to be in the eighties there. 

This meant that we needed to cram our three days of sightseeing into about three hours. Surprisingly, this wasn't as difficult as you would imagine. 

We simply got up early the next morning, drove to the most popular arches, hiked the short trail, took some pictures, and got our souvenirs. This took about one and a half hours. Tops. Boom. We were done with Arches and we had the pictures and souvenirs to prove it. I have no idea what we thought we were going to do with all that extra time. 

And now, we're on to The Rockies. 

I couldn't help it.