What can I tell you about Winter? It is made from silver and copper...

To read the previous part click here - Gray mantle of fog...

We left Canyonlands and drove a couple of dozen miles to Arches. Another place where the weather and centuries created a nature masterpiece. Time carved the figures and arches from the dark red rocks and today thousands of people are coming here to see it. This time we were there in a very interesting moment... Unimaginable time when the red and white created something different. Magical and mystical, attractive and magnificent...

But before we got there we had some peculiar experiences because of the weather. The road dove to the fog and surfaced back all the time. Mostly we had some sense of direction, but often just hoped the road brings us there and we don't get lost...

 

Driving through deep foggo-snow is not like your daily commute to work. You are swimming in the frothed milk most of the time and sometimes finding something on the side of the road - a tree, a hill, a small town... and this "something" appears from nowhere and disappears after a second vanishing in the thin air...

I was looking through the windshield covered with drops of water, when the mountain wall appeared on the left... And there was a guard watching the valley. Probably it was just my imagination, you tell me... Can you see the figure on the wall? Or it was just me dreaming...

The view of the hills stepping from the milky fog made me think about their age... These hills are not just old... They are very old... Millions of years they are staying there and watching around. Watching and laughing at us, small and short-living creatures trying to run so fast to capture something... They know, all you need to do is to stay and wait... And everything passes by...

Once we reached the park we drove through the huge gates and stopped at the hills of the... hm... mountains? Yes, a small mountain (or huge, if you compare it to the cars parked at its feet).

Park Avenue was on the left. Skyscrapers were really scraping the sky and we couldn't see the top of the rocks hidden in the clouds... We all have been here before but everything looked not as we remembered it. Everything looked so different and unknown. Absolutely unbelievable and beautiful!

But when I turned around I saw a completely different view - snowless valley, powdered with a thin layer of sugar and everything was red-ish there... Red rocks and red soil... red-brown grass and small bushes of the same color, pretending to be rocks. Probably I was imagining things, but in fact we all were. We were dreaming when we were walking and saw something that wasn't here. Didn't I tell you we found ourselves in a fairytale that day ;)

We returned on the road and drove very slowly. The fog, the ice, poor visibility and quietness... We saw a 45 mph speed limit sign and laughed - we were doing 30 and felt that was too fast and 45 looked like a mockery.

But because of the slowness, we (we, meaning all of us but the driver) had time to enjoy looking around and imagining things. Here we all agreed it was a Great Chinese Wall (or at least a small piece of it) ;)

And here are three girls gossiping about the weather I guess...

Some wanderers lost in the fog...

What can you make from this picture? Turn on your imagination and you can find something!

Fog and slow falling snow made everything look so different from what we expected. But no complaints. In fact we all loved what we saw.

The mountains were poking through the fog but the tops were dissolving and the clouds (or fog? or snow?). We were reaching the farthest viewpoint in the park...

Arches Park is one of the most beautiful places in Utah. It is beautiful in Summer when the red rocks come in combination with green grass and leaves. But we had no idea how magnificent it looked in Winter, when the red combined with white. Especially when the white is not covering the red, but puts a veil on it...

Can you see the arch in the picture? Right, just in the middle. By the way, there was another arch in the previous picture too, and I bet you missed it. Right? Don't you worry, makes two of us ;) I missed it too and found it only later, when I looked at the picture and had a closer and better look...

Snowy pines look lovely, don't they?

Finally we reached the last stop and got out of the car.

I cannot describe what we felt at this moment. Complete serenity, incredible quietness and indefinite calmness... The snow was slowly falling down covering everything around... Just look at it and try to feel it. Don't you want to stay there forever? We wanted to. Not for long, actually, once the cold was getting to our limbs we changed our mind ;)

We hiked a little bit between two tall cliffs and wanted to go further but changed our mind. First it was cold... Second, we still needed to go back... And most importantly we were afraid to get lost in this white silence... So we turned and slowly walked to the car.

We climbed into the car and unhurriedly drove back, hoping to see something else that day...

We stopped again for a short while at the Windows, but didn't hike there. Too much snow, not enough time and we already made up our mind and decided to drive back to Denver so we had a good 8-10 hours through the mountains in front of us.

I guess we were very lucky to be there at the right time. Right time, because we were able to see something gorgeous and also rare. Right, we didn't get to Bryce Canyon as we wanted, but we saw something so beautiful we forgot about our initial destination. Can you believe we never mentioned Bryce on our way back. We were so full of the impression of Utah under the snow so everything else just slipped out of mind and felt unimportant. I still think this trip was one of the best we ever had. We were so fortunate the weather was so bad and made everything so delicate and just marvelous...

Interesting to know where we found ourselves next day? Click here Snow road from here to Cripple Creek

Pictures were taken on March 20, 2010.