Weather looking good for Utah trip (PCT d - 30 on Monday)

With just over four weeks to go until the big Pacific Crest Trail section hike in Oregon, the next stage of preparation is really close - my three-night trip to Arches and Canyonlands National Parks in Utah. The weather is looking pretty good for that:

No precipitation, little wind until Friday, not freezing at night.

Since I didn't get to actually sleep in my hammock while hiking near Norris last weekend, this will be the first proper test of that. The terrain is high desert, with not many trees, except 2,000 feet lower down, next to the Colorado River. The hazards may not include bears or mountain lions this time, but they still include rattlesnakes, plus scorpions and black widow spiders! I expect we'll actually see a lot of ravens and geckos.

There will be some late food shopping on Monday, plus some bulk water shopping and truck packing on Tuesday evening, so that we can make an early (6 am) start on Wednesday morning. We should be in Moab well before sunset so, after staking out our campsite for the evening, we'll drive into one of the parks to capture the magical lights and colors of the setting sun on the iron-tinted sandstone landscape. On Thursday and Friday there will be a number of short hikes to see more of the sandstone arches, spires, fins and balanced rocks, and the mesas of southeastern Utah.

The near-real time map will be available again at https://share.delorme.com/janesdaddy although, of course, there won't be any data to see there until after Wednesday afternoon. (p/w is the small town with the short name mentioned in the previous paragraph).