We decided to break the drive out to UT up a teeny bit and get a mini family trip in for just our little family by stopping in Moab and spending a day in Arches National Park. As a 4th grader this past year, Alec was given a pass to all the National Parks. He was excited to use it. We packed up things in MS and didn't get out on the road until 10:00pm Monday night because we had some last minute things to finish up (including hemming and skinnify-ing some pants for the Elders, letting Chris work an almost full day, cleaning the house, doing laundry and getting a nap in for Chris). Chris took the first turn driving and I got a few hours of sleep. He stopped at a rest stop around 4:00AM and I couldn't sleep so we switched and I drove for a bit. I could barely last 3 hours and switched back to Chris after he got some sleep. We arrived in Cortez, Colorado, about 2 hours from Moab just after dinner and found a cheap, but nice motel where we all fell asleep pretty fast (after, of course, some crazy jumping around by the kids). Charlie woke up throwing up in the middle of the night. Poor Chris was so tired and zonked, I just let him sleep while I cleaned it up. Usually, Chris is the throw-up cleaner-upper...especially when I'm pregnant and in my first trimester but I plugged my nose and got her done. I moved Charlie over to sleep on the floor by the bathroom so he could throw up in the trash can or toilet if he needed. He had to do that a few times right away but then slept the rest of the night through and felt normal in the morning. So weird. I'm guessing motion sickness or over-treating (since each the kids had their own backpack with some bags of treats). After getting some breakfast at a nearby grocery store, we headed up to Moab and into Arches. There were lots of people and it was super hot. We did the Windows and Double Arches first.
Double Arch was pretty cool. I hadn't done this one before. The kids loved to climb all over the rocks and see how high or far they could go at every arch. They never wanted to leave each arch and I had to remind them and convince them that the next place would be pretty fun too. Gwen and Freddy I think were the only ones who complained a few times about having to walk or being hot, but mostly all the kids were good hikers.
We drove and hiked to the closest lookout point to Delicate Arch, but Freddy fell asleep in the car driving there and Chris offered to stay with him and get a little nap too. This hike was surprisingly more tiring than I thought since I didn't bring any water with us but it wasn't very far and the older kids were awesome and kept up my fast pace.
At some point we had beef jerky, crackers, oranges and trail mix for lunch. Then we drove to the northern most part of the park and were going to do one more hike there to.. I can't remember...Sand Dunes arch? But the road/section was closed! Kinda sad about that but the kids were hot and ready to stay in the car for a while so we just started driving to Herriman.
We made good time (despite being stuck with lane closures for almost an hour at the mouth of the canyon!!) and were looking for a Taco Bell to grab dinner before we got to Tiffany's but when we realized we'd be passing Provo in the next couple exits and still hadn't found one, we decided to surprise Chris' parents and drop in their house to use the rest room first. Jess and Ryan are living there while they remodel their new house and Jess was just putting down a huge pan of lasagna on the table when we rang the doorbell. It was fun to surprise them and super nice that we could just eat a warm dinner with them and let the kids play a bit. We got in to Tiffany's house around 8:00 pm.
