The Fiery Furnace

Another fun hike we went on was called the Fiery Furnace. It cost $10 because you had to go with a ranger guide, otherwise you have to get a permit and get lost because it is way hard to get out on your own. We were worried that it might get canceled because it was sprinkling but the hiking must go on in the parks, so we went. I guess it is canceled for lightning storms.

Our ranger got out of her car to lead us and I (like many of the men, but they were trying to conceal it) was like, "huh?" This skinny tan really pretty young girl stepped out. I didn't believe it until she put on the hat, then it was like, "oh... I guess she is official". I wish I had a better picture of Ranger Kate to get the full effect. Anyways, it took me by surprise. She was really cute and SUPER excited about her job. She had little demonstrations to try to help us better understand, but I will admit, I was still pretty lost when she talked about most of the rock movement stuff. Here is dad offering to help (way to go dad, took a lot of encouraging from the babe ranger, eh? just teasing dad- you were great) in the demo.

We saw many little arches along the way. Here is Michael and I about to go through the "crawling arch".
Michael was so cute when we came to this area of the hike. He immediately saw this arch and said, "What does THAT look like?" I smiled and gave him a smooch. We spent the next 5 minutes trying to take a self-portrait of us and the kissing arch... but Ranger Kate was trying to explain the science of the area to the group and so we couldn't ask anyone to help us. Not to mention, Michael was pretty embarrassed that I was making him even take the picture. So we just kept giggling and trying to take it by ourselves. You can see a part of it in the top middle of this picture.
We even tried the stitch feature on our camera, and it didn't work. Oh well! But Michael was so cute to play along in taking the picture. How cute is my husband for seeing that and being so cute to tell me... He will probably be embarrassed of these pics but since he might not do it in the future because I will spend the next 10 minutes having him try to take smoochey pictures with me, I figured I better capture it and share :) So here is cute Michael giggling and me testing the stitch feature.Another arch to walk under...
The skull of the fiery furnace.... ooooh, scary!
We enjoyed the hike. At the end as we were walking past our guide to the cars, Michael said in a really funny 5th grader-like voice, "Well thanks Ranger Kate" that seemed as if he had enjoyed his little field trip. I thought it was really cute but we don't know how Ranger Kate took it because she made a funny face. Hopefully she understands that Michael is actually being gracious even though he sounds like a little boy trapped in a man's body. I think he is pretty cute to say thank you.
We had to take a picture of the balanced rock on our way out. There was a small one on the hike (behind the tree behind Michael) and a big one that we took from the car.

Well that is all for the Moab trip. That was 3 days of CAMPING! I obviously don't have the energy to blog DisneyWorld from 6 weeks ago! hopefully soon!