Eye of the Whale
We just finished Cache Valley and Walt's Jeep sounded like it had birds stuck in it somewhere. He decided to head into town to get the issue fixed, so he left us for the rest of the day. The rest of us turned on Willow Flats Road and easily found the trailhead for Eye of the Whale. It looked like it was going to be a mellow ride.
The southern part of the trail doesn't have as much scenery as the northern part, but it was still a nice, sandy trip through the desert. We could see we were getting closer to Herdina Park. It didn't take much time at all for us to get to the Eye of the Whale Arch parking area, which was well marked and easy to find.
We parked and got out, and most of us hiked to the arch. We had a discussion about which rock was the "whale" so the arch would be its "eye" but we couldn't really picture it. The arch looked like it made the tail and not the eye. It turns out you can't really see the "eye" unless you go through the arch and look at it from the other side. The hike was short and uneventful, and we started to head back.
As we walked back we saw a huge group of 4x4 vehicles coming from the other direction. They boxed our vehicles in, and they saw us walking back. When we got there, we had to ask them to give us a way out of the parking area, which was a bit of an ordeal. We finally escaped, though, and headed northwest.
The scenery got better as we got farther in. The sandy area was deep and fun but we'd seen deeper sand in the area in other places. There were some fun stretches of sand, especially when it worked its way through a wash. There was some deep shade in there, and it would be a nice way to escape the heat.
The last bit was fairly straight, and we soon found our way to the Tower Arch trail. We turned left here to go see the arch. Eye of the Whale was a good find, and a trail we'd use again.
