Our second guided tour is of Balcony House, which requires quite a bit more climbing to reach, including this 32-foot ladder, only a portion of which is pictured here.

 
Visiting the dwellings made it very easy to understand what life here must have been like and one can only marvel at the architecture and ingenity of the people who created these dwellings.

This wider angle view of Cliff Palace reveals the magnitude of this dwelling which has 150 individual rooms and 23 kivas. It is still not known what motivated the Anasazi to build their homes in the cliffs and to subsequently abandon them for the plains. Access to the Cliff House is only allowed during a ranger led tour and we were fortunate to have a very entertaining and well informed guide.

Today finds us in Colorado at Mesa Verde National Park for an entirely different experience which features man made beauty rather than natural wonders. Here the ancestral Puebloans built a series of cliff dwellings to accommodate entire villages. It is easy to mistake this photo for a diorama size model but as you will see in the next photo these structures were built into the side of a mesa.

 
On the way back I make a short detour to visit Pine Tree Arch which was well worth the additional quarter mile. The boys have seen enough arches for one day and opt to return to the RV where lunch is waiting.

The boys and I continued on to Double O Arch, which required a strenuous 5-mile roundtrip but was worth the effort. Most people view the arch from the other side since that is where the trail ends. I find this reverse side view to be even more spectacular.

Our primary destination this morning was Landscape Arch which required a modearte hike to reach. It is really hard to imagine how this structure sustains itself under its own weight. I think it is quite possible that it will collapse within the kids lifetime and am very happy that they had a chance to see this wonder of nature.

Delicate Arch is perhaps the most widely recognized in Utah. It is a subject I could spend hours photographing and would like to return on a future trip to do this subject justice during evening light.

This hot air balloon provided a nice element to lend scale to the photograph.

Today makes our second day at Arches and we get an early start to avoid the tourists and mid day heat. We are greated by the Three Gossips.

As the park became emmersed in golden light and the kids had retreated to the RV I took my time to photograph Double Arch using a multiple exposure technique that brings out all the dynamic range of the scene.

All three kids enjoyed striking a pose framed within one of the windows and I enjoyed the challenge of setting up the shots. Although we saw a lot today the grandeur of these windows were not lost on the kids who enjoyed them all the more for their ability to combine climbing with viewing.

As the afternoon was coming to an end we headed into Arches National Park where we spent a few hours in the Windows Section. As evening approached the temperature decreased and the crowds abated. Pictured here are the North and South Windows taken from Turret Arch with the kids posed in the foreground on a large outcrop. The perspective conceals the fact that the window openings are easily 30-40 feet tall.

Before leaving the park, we stopped at the visitor center just in time to hear a naturalist speak about the indigenous animals. We were able to handle the skulls pictured here, which included a long-horned sheep, mule deer, coyote, and raven as well as a bobcat and a mountain lion.