Mississippi River Trip: Junior Ranger!

We went to Island in the Sky the next day because the ranger at Needles told us it would be 10 degrees cooler, and with the thermometer not dropping below ninety the night before, and already past ninety at 10am we figured we wouldn’t do any hiking around Needles.  After setting camp (not nearly as pretty as the Needles) we stopped by the Island in the Sky Visitor’s center to wait out the hot middle of the day.  Usually the Visitor’s Centers have been  great about having places that we could plug in to charge batteries and catch up on blogging, but not Island in the Sky.  No power, no water, no nothing.  It’s still a great visitor’s center, and Larisa did manage to get a ranger to plug in the lap top for us.

While we waited for the computer to charge I decided to become a junior ranger.  The junior ranger program is open to kids of all ages, and Larisa determined that I qualified.  The process required filling out a little booklet that included several questions about the park, a maze, a connect the dots puzzle, and a word search.  It was great.  When I finished the booklet the ranger went through it with me, laughing hard when she saw I answered the question “Name one food source in the park” with “My wife, for bears”.  Then made me do a quiz on the birds of the park.  I got to write my own oath (it’s part of the booklet).  Mine was essentially a retelling of my rant at Rocky Mountain National Park, which made the ranger laugh out loud.  Finally she presented me with my badge, which I immediately fixed to my hat.

We hiked a “short” trail called Apache Bluffs that evening.  Short is in quotes because Larisa and I wandered a bunch and made it very long indeed.  The whole time I was playing Junior Ranger and admonishing Larisa to stay on the trail.  She took it with surprisingly good grace – I’d have killed me.

The next morning we got up before sunrise to catch some pictures of  Arch.  The arch lights up in the morning as sunlight hits the rocks below, and the orange-yellow reflection from the rocks is beautiful.  The only thing that marred it was that several people were arguing over picture spots to the point that names were called.  Larisa and I chuckled at the people and picked spots that photographers want – not tourists.  Our pictures were probably the best of the bunch.  We marveled at the fact that folks would ruin their vacation time by arguing about something so ridiculous, especially when there were two dozen better places to shoot from.

That night we caught the sunset from the edge of the Mesa, but neither of us was really in a picture taking mood, so we watched it instead.  Words cannot describe. 

We did Arches National Park on the way out, including a short hike, but frankly our sense of wonder is becoming overworked, so we plan to take a couple of days rest at Glen Canyon.