Moab Coronacation, Part 2

After dinner on Monday we all went back to Arches so we could complete the hike to "the world's most famous natural stone arch" (according to the NPS): Delicate Arch.  It's a steep 3-mile round-trip hike that is not always well-marked but covers a variety of terrain, from paved path to bare rock face to ledges on cliffs.  We did this hike a few years ago and felt like we were going to get blown off the mountain - we were very glad that the weather was more tame this time!

It was also very cool that we arrived at the arch at sunset AND had an adventure hiking back to the car using our headlamp and flashlights!  We made a quick stop to see the +300-year-old petroglpyhs near the trailhead on our way back to the car.

Tuesday morning was similar to Monday: get up early, have breakfast, and go to the park first thing while Ben stayed at the hotel to work.  The kids' favorite part of the breakfast buffet: bottomless individual servings of Nutella.

We made sure to go to a favorite hike from our 2011 visit that we'd missed in 2017: Double Arch.  I loved that the kids could just climb all over this thing back then, and this visit was no different.  We were here for about 45 minutes (and it's only a 3-minute walk from the parking area, so almost the entire time was at the arch) just taking pictures and exploring.

Do you see Cat?

Our last stop was the trail head for Sand Dune Arch and Broken Arch.  Sand Dune was another great place to just climb and explore, with an arch hidden between two large formations where the ground was covered with sand.

We actually walked right under Broken Arch and kept going when we were looking for it because we thought the arch at the end of the trail was actually broken.  It's not.  Turns out, it's called Broken Arch because it looks like there's a break in the middle but there's not.  Oh well - we still enjoyed this hike, which was very different from the other hikes we did in the park because most of it is through open landscape with lots of scrappy desert plantlife all around.

We hurried back to town after that to pick up Ben for lunch.  We couldn't agree on what to eat so we ended up at a fun little gathering of food trucks and everyone got something they wanted.  While we were there someone was walking around to the trucks and warning them that Moab was closing down restaurants (and trucks too, I guess) to discourage tourists from coming to town and possibly spreading the virus.

After lunch I took the kids to Canyonlands for a few hours.  It was a fun 35-minute drive through scenic country on a curvy two-lane road: I felt like I was in the movie Cars.  The ranger at the guard station said that entry fees were being waved that day and I suspected it was so that rangers weren't risking coming into contact with visitors' germs.

We were in the Island in the Sky part of the park and chose a few hikes to complete.  The first was Aztec Butte, where the highlight was seeing the "Ancestral Puebloan Pantry" right on a cliff.  The granaries are about 1,000 years old and we almost didn't find them.  Jack was the first to try to locate the structures and ended up falling/sliding down the slope about 30 feet before stopping himself and climbing back up.  None of us could see the granaries in that spot, then Cat started walking in the opposite direction and found the granaries pretty quickly.  We also followed a fork of the trail to go up to a butte with an amazing view, but it was really windy.

Next we hiked Upheaval Dome - a large crater where rock that had been buried 1 mile under the surface is now clearly visible.  Geologists don't know if this is due to the rock being pushed up somehow or if the formation was created by a meteorite impact, but either way, it's a strange sight, even in Southern Utah.  We hiked to the first viewpoint and I thought we'd turn around there, since the kids had done a lot of hiking and we were also on a bit of a time crunch, but they all wanted to keep going, so we did!  It was a fun hike with a cool view, and a fellow hiker offered to take a picture of all 5 of us.

We had just enough time after that to go to the Green River Overlook, a viewpoint adjacent to a parking area where the stark curves and edges of the rocks surrounding the Green River are clearly visible.  It was such a cool thing to see.

Honestly, I hadn't thought that a trip to Canyonlands was something I really needed to do but since we were filling up an afternoon while Ben was working we just decided to give it a try.  We really enjoyed it and we all want to go back and do more (and show Ben)!  Specifically we need to see Mesa Arch, Grand View Point, and Whale Rock.  White Rim Overlook and Murphy Point sound cool too.  And next time we're in town, I think we'll go to Dead Horse Point State Park also.  And we should revisit the petroglyphs we saw during our first trip to Moab.  Depending on the season, whitewater rafting or 4-wheeling might be in order too.  We might have to stay for a few days.

I'm so proud of the kids for being such good sports!  They hardly complained at all during two days of walking and hiking - and they are not enthusiastic hikers.

After a few hours at Canyonlands we drove back into town, picked Ben up, and headed home.  The trip home was uneventful, except when the woman at the counter of the truck-stop-Subway told us that we needed to stand 6 feet away from each other, which makes sense, since we were about to spend another 2 hours in a minivan together.

Honestly, this was one of the best trips we've ever taken.  It was so great to have a couple of days to be outside, enjoy some warmer weather, and just hang out together.  The whole time we were there I was thinking, "I'm so glad we're here!  I'm so glad we're not just sitting around the house!"

While we were on the trip, Pres. Trump asked Americans to avoid discretionary travel.  Arches and Canyonlands closed completely about 10 days later.

And - spoiler alert - just as I expected, schools were not closed for 2 just weeks - at this point it will be 7 weeks from the time school was initially canceled to when we could go back (though I won't be surprised if the kids just don't go back to school at all this year).

Which makes me even more thankful that we had this little excursion.