Arches

We pulled into Devil's campground and were amazed. This is a beautiful park with dramatic red formations and arches against a deep blue sky with green trees dotting the landscape. The first photo shows our campground with our green tent to the right. God's extravagance abundantly clear with snow capped moutains clearly visible in the distance. The campground is popular, and tiny. We could see why. Our first full day we took four different hikes. Most of the trails climb up and over huge rocks, through arches or cling to the side of steep hills. The kids loved scrambling up and over, and Kev and I got our first taste of what a work out our legs would be getting over the next few weeks. Nate and Savannah are good for about 15 minutes and then in the backpacks they go. Hiking can be strenuous in many cases, adding a 35+ lb. preschooler is quite the adventure! The arches had the shocking ability to through our sense of prespective out of whack. Or maybe show us how we tend to think we are big and other things are small until we really get close to something. The arches look impressive from afar, but the closer you get the more you shrink and they enlarge until you find yourself nearly overwhelmed by their sheer grandour. At the double arch, Nate and Savannah climbed up so high, then turned around to look for me and realized they were VERY high and just froze. I was about 10 feet below and climbing fast, by the time I got to their little perch on the rock and turned around I had to gasp. We were much higher and steeper than I thought and everyone's knees were shaking! Of course, Joe and Louisa had climbed higher still! It was amazing, scary, breathtaking and incredibly fun.