Celebration Road Trip - Cassidy Arch

We squeezed in all that we could during our short stay at Capitol Reef.  Besides a little relaxing, enjoying the orchards and Fruita Historic District, and our day trip to Goblin Valley, we fit in a day of hiking to Cassidy Arch.  It's named after Butch Cassidy because he lived in this area for a while.  The remains of his cabin can be seen on the nearby "Robber's Roost Trail".

We started our adventure by loading up our packs and driving up the Scenic Drive to a dirt road turn out that was well marked.  There was a turn out on the dirt road where the arch can be seen from below.  It's not easy to spot at first but it's in the center of this photo near the top of the sandstone mountain...a dark, shadowed arch...

We drove a bit further up into the canyon to park.  These striped walls are amazing!

On the opposite side of the canyon was a holey rock wall...

After a short hike up the wash, there was a sign marking the trail up to Cassidy Arch.

Here's what the beginning of the trail looked like...

It soon turned into the sun.  And, yes, it's right on the edge!

Here's that striped that we parked by but from up above...

There's the arch from about half way up...it's the dark spot near the top, right...

Getting closer...

 The trail became wide and smooth on top of that sandstone mountain...

We still had some ups and downs to hike as we made our way over to the arch...

There it is!  We made it!  That's hubby walking on top.

At that point I wasn't going to go across it.  Too scary!

However, as I hiked around on the top of the mountain, I came up to the arch from the other end and found out that it was quite wide.  So, I did it!  That's me on top!...

Thank goodness for these rock cairns that guide us and keep us on the trail.  Whenever we were unsure which way the trail went, we'd just stop and look around for the next cairn.  They were sometimes hard to spot and we'd have to stop and really look hard to find the next one.

Poor hubby, instead of just hiking up to the arch, I make lots and lots of stops to take pictures.  I'm trying to hike more and take photos less because it is a lot more fun and photos are a lot of work (fun work) but when we go places like this it's hard to resist!  So, I try to take most of the photos going up and enjoy the trip back down.  Hubby is starting to take more photos now with his IPhone.  But, he still sees and waits for a lot of this...

What was I taking a photo of in that hole?  This...So pretty!...

Here are a few other photos I took on that hike...

Juniper berries...

I always find flowers like this fascinating.  These start out white (above) and slowly turn pink.

As it shrivels up, it's totally pink.  So cool!

Ahhh....a bit of shade!

Uh oh!  I've been photo bombed!  lol

That hike was a lot of fun!  I love hikes that have something really cool to hike to and see.

I'm SO excited about the next post of our anniversary/celebration road trip!

You won't want to miss it!  :-)