Moab

Saturday, August 6

Today was another driving day. We got up and packed up the RV to finally head to Moab. We left around 9 and got into the campground around 2.

Once we set up the RV, I took full advantage of this weird shelter thing to hang up 3 eno hammocks, 1 hanging eno chair, 2 reclining chairs and the picnic table under it. We sat out there reading and listening to music while we waited for mom and dad to get here.

They finally pulled in at about 6:30… we all sat outside and caught up before heading to downtown Moab for Pasta Jay’s Italian restaurant. After supper we walked around downtown to do a little shopping; while we were down there Dad read a sign announcing a star gazing presentation at Arches National Park. We decided to go, so we drove to arches and sat through the presentation on other worlds and exoplanets. The telescope portion of the presentation was cut out because it was overcast so we went home early and got to bed around 10:45. I really enjoyed it and learned a lot about how NASA is exploring space.

Sunday, August 7

Now today was a great day. We woke up early (for me like 6:00 early cause I fell of my sleeping mat that was already on the floor… sleeping arrangements were a little wonky because Mom and Dad joined us.

Once we all were ready to go, we piled in Dad’s rental Tahoe and headed towards Arches National Park. At the Park we stopped at several overlooks, hiked to the double arch and climbed inside the opening for a while. We ended the day with a hike to the landscape arch - the longest natural arch in North America.

Evan has the many-ton rock in his hand - sort of!

Double Arch

Landscape Arch

Peek-a-boo

Sure hope that rock doesn't fall!!!

Making our own arch

When we finished the 1.5 mile hike from the landscape arch, we piled back in the car and drove to the overlook of the delicate arch... we had to climb about a billion steps to see it.

Those arches were truly beautiful. There have been 2000+ registered in the Park and we only saw about 30. Then we also got close to the fins that the arches developed from on some of our hikes, they’re narrow slabs of sandstone, and when the center is eroded, an arch is formed.

After Arches we were all exhausted so we came back to the RV to have lunch, chill out and edit pictures before our Jeep ride that evening.

When we were sitting around looking at pictures, Papa realized he didn’t get his National Parks Passport Book stamped, so I drove him back to the park to get it stamped and he got me a passport too! My very first stamp was Arches (but letting the record show- we also went to Rocky Mtn. National Park this week.)

After dinner around 6:30 we went to the campsite check in to wait for Dan Mick to pick us up in the Jeep we would be in for our sunset Jeep tour. I’m not completely sure how to describe this tour. We took these modified Jeeps (bigger tires and suspension systems) out to these huge rocks in Moab that were smooth, but would come up out of nowhere and go straight up. Our ride started out with a wall of rock. Literally 80 degree angle facing up. Dan took us straight up that rock, and at one point it was only 2 wheels on the ground.

Stairway to Heaven

From there it only got worse as he took us up “The Intimidator.” This was a bridge of rock that was very thin and even more uneven. I’m pretty sure that at some point on that rock we all got a little nervous.

Then Dan took us up and down all sorts of rocks, speeding around dirt curves in between the obstacles. After about an hour of craziness, he stopped with the 3 other Jeeps in our tour where they taught us about the dinosaur tracks in the area. These were real tracks from real dinosaurs. We learned about the size of the dinosaur, and acted out a fight scene between a brachiosaurus and allosaurus based on the tracks.

We drove around for another hour - our last stop being “Hell’s Revenge” (you can imagine) before stopping to watch sunset over the cliffs bordering the Colorado river. They gave us brownies, strawberries and whipped cream before taking a picture standing on the wheels of 2 Jeeps.

We drove around for about another 45 minutes before stopping in the parking lot (it’s now 9:45) and stargazing for about 20 minutes.

We got back to the RV around 10:30. Dad and I packed up the camera and tripod to take out to arches (one of the declared dark spots in the United States) to TRY and take pictures of the stars. We got a few but they all came out black so that was a bummer.

This is the only one that kinda turned out, but as you can see, there was some major editing to bring out the stars. 

I think the whole group was finally in bed by 11:45 (1:45 Mom and Dad’s time).