We had one week after graduation before we had to head home. Since we were in the Western states, and near some beautiful National Parks, we decided to visit several of them. One in particular seemed fascinating: Arches National Monument near Moab, Utah.

This National Park preserves over 2,000 natural sandstone arches as well as a variety of unique geological formations. In addition to the arches, there are balanced rock formations and pinnacles all with contrasting colors, landforms, and textures. It is truly unique. All these arches were created millions of years ago by water undercutting layers of the sandstone and eventually cutting a hole through the rock, thus creating an arch.

It was a long way to get to the Park; it was uphill on a dirt road with lots of twists and turns. There were no guard rails anywhere. I would estimate that the drop offs were five hundred feet down! Half way up the mountain it started to rain. Then as we got to the higher elevations it was snowing. The road was getting muddy and the rear wheels were spinning as we fish tailed up the road. Remember, in those days all cars were rear wheel drive.

When we got to Arches the sun was out and we spent about six hours exploring and taking photos. About one hour before sunset, and tired from a lot of hiking, we started back down. On the way down where it had been snowing and raining, the dirt road had turned to mud. Other people had made the trip down before us so now the mud had ruts in it, some quite deep. As we proceeded, the mud became slippery and I got into one of the ruts. I tried to turn to the left to get out of the rut, got out of it, then started to slide to the left. Suddenly I hit the brakes because we were headed for one of those drop-offs with no guard rails. And then it happened. The front wheels of the car went over the edge and we slid about a foot more with the bottom frame of the car resting on the edge of the drop-off. Then we could feel the car slowly moving forward. Then it stopped and it began to teeter ever so slightly. We both were screaming at the top of our lungs and crying. I said, "We're going to die if we don't do something quick." We could not get the front doors open so I said, "Let's carefully climb over the front seat and get out through the back doors." As we started to climb over the seat, the car shifted maybe a couple of inches and the car became a see-saw, moving ever so slightly up and down. We were right at the fulcrum--the point of balance.