Arches, Canyonlands, Moab

After driving thru the Moab area on our way to Albuquerque, I was excited to go back and spend time there.  It is a beautiful place full of red rock and stunning sunsets. We pulled into town and since we were so close to Arches National Park, we decided to drive in and get a general feel for the park and make some plans.  The park is small so we got about half way thru in about an hour.  The red rock there makes Sedona, AZ look like a grade school playground!  We ended up spending one more day in the park, doing a 10 mile hike thru the "Devil's Garden" area and driving thru the other part of the park we missed the first day.  There are a little over 2000 arches in the park but there is no way to see all of them.  The roads and various hikes do get you close to a lot of them though.  Each of them are amazing and just leave you in awe about the time it takes to make them. 
We took 2 separate days to do the Canyonlands National Park.  This is because the 2 entrances are very far apart and are not connected.  One is called the Islands in the Sky district and the other part is called the Needles district.  Both have unbelievable views but the Needles was my favorite between the two.  Islands in the Sky has more of the canyon views you would expect from the park's name and the Needles district has a lot of hoodoos and the scenery looks a lot like what the scene scouts for the various Star Wars films must have seen when building sets for those movies.  Absolutely out of this world!  We did a couple of hikes in the Needles district but after the ten mile hike the day before in Arches, our legs were kind of shot. We did all of one hike that took you to scenery you can't see from the road but we only did half of the one that gives you the amazing Star Wars views.  If we go back to the area I will definitely finish that hike that takes you further into the hoodoos.
We had one last day in town and we wanted to do a 4x4 expedition with a "mule" but all the tours were booked so we ended up just spending the day in the town of Moab, going thru the little shops all up and down the main street.  There was a lot to see and after all the hiking maybe it was good to have a relaxing day.  :)