May 9

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You also need a timed entry ticket for Arches National Park. What purpose that serves, no one really knows. With the ticket, you can enter within the first hour of its validity, but after that you can come and go as you please for the rest of the day. So the point of timed tickets doesn’t really make sense to me. But whatever. There are quite a few things about Americans that don’t make sense. But this isn’t the platform for that.

Arches National Park is definitely captivating. That's for sure. Here, too, there are rock formations so unreal they almost seem too specific and strange to have been shaped by nature. Deep red rocks in a desert-like landscape. Now and then a little lizard darts away. But most of the wildlife has probably been driven away by the constant flood of tourists. Unfortunately, many people also don’t stick to the designated paths or respect the restricted areas. And there are no rangers in sight to remind people of the rules.

Anyway.The Arches are fantastic. And the photo ops too! But it's hot, and we can’t leave Jupiter (our dog) alone in the car for long because of the heat. So we explore most of the park from the road. Breeze from driving! (Dogs are usually not allowed in national parks, which means walking with the dog isn’t really an option either.)

After we’d had enough of the red arches and the tourists, we hit the road again to explore more of Colorado. We ended up at a Harvest Host in Palisade. There, we sipped some wine and tried a refreshing drink that was new to me called "Frozé" — a kind of granita made with rosé wine. Frozen wine. Super tasty!

The wine was pretty good. The parking spot, however, wasn’t great. Right next to the railway line and no greenery. Oh well. Once it cooled down a bit, I took Jupiter for a walk to the city park. We planned to take a nice long route. I mapped it out with Google Maps — a nice loop. But someone really threw a wrench into our plans. (I still don’t know who to blame. Probably myself, for being too trusting.)

Anyway, the route ended up being twice as long as planned. All because the bridge I had chosen to cross the river turned out to be a private bridge and therefore inaccessible. So Jupiter and I had to walk about a kilometer downstream to the next bridge. What was supposed to be a one-hour walk turned into two. And in the end, we had to walk back to our starting point along the edge of the highway. Not fun!