By the time you emerge from the Furnace, the late-afternoon light will be casting a rosy glow on the eastern landscape. This is your chance to get those picture-postcard shots of Delicate Arch and Balanced Rock before heading home. If you're lucky, you might spot some desert bighorn sheep along Highway 191 south of the visitors center. These animals once roamed the Southwest by the millions but were rendered nearly extinct due to hunting and disease carried by livestock. Today there are 75 bighorn in Arches, part of a reintroduction program from Canyonlands National Park being carried out by the Park Service. It was likely a leap of faith to dangle off Moore's ropes in the Fiery Furnace, so consider celebrating your success tonight with the best food in Moab, at the French-Southwestern–inflected Desert Bistro (1266 N. Hwy. 191; 435-259-0756; entrées, $19–$38).

Day 3: Canyonlands National Park

If you've got some vacation time to spare, you might want to add another day in Moab instead of heading out of town today. If not, it's time to check out of the Red Cliffs Lodge or the Gonzo Inn and make your way south to Canyonlands National Park. This park is divided by the Green and Colorado rivers into three sections: Island in the Sky, a high mesa with endless views; the Maze, a not easily accessed labyrinth of sandstone fins and canyons; and the Needles, the district you'll be exploring today, named for the lithe rose- and buff-colored spires that abound here. Ten miles off Highway 191 on your way into the Needles district of the park, stop at Newspaper Rock, an enormous canvas for petroglyphs and pictographs chiseled and painted by the Anasazi, the Navajo, and even cowboys throughout the past 3,000 years. If you're game for some rather extreme off-roading, your guide from Tag-a-Long Expeditions (800-453-3292; tagalong.com) will meet you here at 9 A.M. (allow an hour for the trip from Moab). Together you'll tackle Elephant Hill, one of the most technical four-wheel-drive roads in all of Utah—don't worry, you're just the passenger—capped off by an hour or so of hiking deep in the park, as well as stops at several rock art sites. The sheer-cliff switchbacks and sidewall-hugging squeezes will either have you grinning with glee or clutching the door frame in terror. If you think the latter is more likely, you might want to simply hike in on your own from the Elephant Hill trailhead to the Chesler Park Loop, a nine-mile circle—in which case you should bring another picnic lunch and plenty of water. The non-claustrophobic can add another mile or two along the Joint Trail, which winds into deep slot canyons too narrow for a set of broad shoulders. Snaking through this chilled rock is a welcome respite from the desert heat. Canyonlands is far less touristed than Arches, and the farther in you hike, the fewer people you'll share the trail with. Two mid-nineteenth-century expeditions through this area gave many of the formations rather colorful names—like Paul Bunyan's Potty, an enormous, teardrop-shaped horizontal hole—but you might well name your own mushroom patch or Red Square among the bulbous spires.