Side Trip to Arco...

( Writing this on Oct. 17, from Moab, Utah. )

The third and forth days we  hiked several of the other trails in the park and hung around camp relaxing and reading.  There was no phone or internet service at all in or around the park.  The fifth day we went to the nearest town; Arco, Idaho, to do laundry and grocery shop.  While at the laundry someone told David how to get to the Natural Arch in Arco.  So we decided to do that hike while we were in town.  We drove several miles on a one lane dirt road to get to the base of the mountain, parked the truck at the trailhead and started to climb up the mountain trail.  Now, we have lived all our lives at 700 ft. elevation there in Clarkston, so I'm pretty sure starting that hike at 6300 ft. elevation and climbing up to 7600 ft. elevation was a good days hike for us old geezers.  Of course it took us an hour and a half going up and a half hour to come down, David is nice enough to go at my pace.
First I have to put in a couple cloud pictures I took on the way to Arco.

You can see the valley floor down below where our truck is parked.

And we keep going up.  Sometimes the path is narrow and sometimes there were stairs.

This was our prize, our first natural arch hike.

                         The view of the valley as we start back down.

On the drive back to Craters of the Moon, we again have a beautiful sky to look at.