Morning on June 7th found David and I camped out in Comb Wash, west of Blanding Utah. After a fried eggs and toast breakfast, we loaded up the ATVs and headed across the highway and north up Comb Wash several miles to the mouth of Arch Canyon. Along the way, a doe mule deer jumped out in front of me close enough that I could have slapped her rear end. That was too close!
Arch Canyon is an absolute wonder! Where else can you find natural arches, Indian ruins, a small stream of water and the sandstone cliffs that southern Utah is famous for.
I could make an argument for this canyon being my all time favorite Utah location…. except there is always the Escalante Canyon complex.
It was a wonderful, sunny and warm day to be in Arch Canyon. We didn’t see another soul all day long.
In the first six miles of the lower canyon, we had taken pictures of four new rim arches.
We finally had to ignore interesting sites just to make it to the end of the canyon and the forest service boundary. David then found another natural arch a short distance up Texas Canyon that we had never seen in any documentation before.
Here we parked the ATVs and started hiking up Arch Canyon, past Cathedral Arch and Angel Arch, for just over 2.5 miles to where we could get good pictures of Keystone Arch.
We were a little out of shape for hiking so on the way back, we stopped to soak our feet in the stream. It was great!
Also on the way back, we stumbled upon a small class D bridge in the bottom on the canyon. We were dragging by the time we got back to the ATVs and the shadows were getting long.
We headed back down the canyon, stopping occasionally to take pictures of the Indian ruins high in the cliffs. Jail House Ruins was especially awesome.
Near the bottom of the canyon, we stopped to take pictures of the Indian ruins. These were ruins along the base of the cliffs instead of high in the cliffs.
By the time we arrived back at camp, we had gone 23 miles on ATVs and another 5.25 miles hiking.
We loaded up our camping equipment and headed back to Blanding Utah to find a motel room and a shower.