Arches - Day 1

Thursday, October 18

We have talked for a while about taking the family down to Arches National Park in Moab and now seemed like the perfect time to do it.  (The last time DH and I were there was when I was 7 months pregnant with M&M.)  The younger kids were still off-track from school and M&M had Thursday and Friday off for fall recess.  I made reservations at a nearby hotel for Thursday night and we left Thursday morning for the drive down there.  Things had been pretty hectic schedule wise earlier that week so we didn't get much packing done until that morning so we left a little later than we were hoping to.  It is a little over a 4 hour drive and we got down there around 1:30 in the afternoon.  M&M kept the kids busy for part of the drive with some games.  The kids ended up just watching one movie on the way down.  Unfortunately DH remembered about halfway there that he had forgotten to bring the tripod for his camera and his battery charger for his camera - and his battery in the camera was not fully charged.  So DH was a little conservative in taking pictures so that he could preserve the battery for both days.  I did have our point and shoot camera as well so I tried to take more pictures with that.

We had made sandwiches prior to leaving the house so we pulled them out and ate them in the car on our way to Moab.  After we got there we saw Double Arch and the family minus me and MJ (who fell down and skinned her hand) walked to North Window and South Window arches.

Double Arch

Next we drove to the trailhead for the Upper and Lower viewpoints of Delicate Arch and hiked to both of the viewpoints.

Family pictures from the Upper Viewpoint with Delicate Arch in the distance.

Kay and MJ loved playing with all of the rocks (and sand) everywhere.

MJ could usually be found serenading her dad while riding on his back.  She was usually singing the chorus from "Nephi's Courage".  "I will go, I will DOOOO!"

After the hike to the Delicate Arch viewpoints we drove to the end of the park and hiked to Landscape Arch.  Along the way we took a side trail to see Pine Tree Arch and Tunnel Arch.

Pine Tree Arch - It was hard to get a good picture of this arch with where the sun was located in the sky.  There is a pine tree growing directly under this arch.

Tunnel arch (above) and the picture below shows the shadow of it on the neighboring rock face.

Whenever DH was taking a picture of the rest of the family, MJ would stand up straight in the backpack carrier and say, "Cheese!"  Then after the picture was taken she would say, "Okay, that's good."

Landscape Arch in the background (above)

At the beginning of the Landscape Arch hike, Kay saw this rock that she thought looked like Ariel's rock in The Little Mermaid so we had her pose on it on the way back to the car.

After we finished with the Landscape Arch hike we headed back to the car and then headed to our hotel (unfortunately located about 45 minutes away).  (The cheapest hotel I could find for our family was located in Green River.  It's hard to find hotels online that will accommodate the size of our family.  There was a Motel 6 in Green River that we could request 2 rooms next to each other for a very cheap price.  They were both supposed to have 2 double beds each but when we went to checkin they couldn't find our reservation and the only two non-smoking rooms they could give us that were next to each other were a room with one queen bed and one with 2 double beds.  Since we were one bed short we had Luke and MJ sleep on the floor.)  After checking into the hotel we headed to Burger King for dinner and then back to the hotel again for the night.  The kids did great at Arches and for the most part were real troopers.  We also had beautiful weather!!  It was perfect!

Playing Uno in the hotel room.

MJ up to no good...