Blanding Trip: Day 1

Road Trip!

We began our trip bright and early this morning as we drove away from our house at 7:30 am. This was going to be our long driving day and we wanted to get it over with as soon as possible. The boys were actually amazing in the car. They rode well and rarely complained. We made it to Moab for lunch and ate at the local diner we enjoyed when we came down to Arches a few months ago. After eating at Arches we headed towards Canyonlands (the Needles side), but we made two stops on the way. First we stopped at Wilson Arch. You can see this arch right from the road, but that didn't stop us from hiking up to stand underneath it. Seth hiked this one all alone with a little help from dad. Our next stop was Newspaper Rock which was so neat. It is a huge rock slab covered in petroglyphs. There are TONS! We really enjoyed identifying all the different images on the rock.

Standing under Wilson Arch

Newspaper Rock

After our stop at Newspaper Rock, we headed to Canyonlands. This was when our first big adventures happened. Mark threw up in the car. He had been reading for awhile and I think he forgot to look up, so he got car sick. So we had to make a little stop on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere and clean him up, as well as the car. He hadn't really made it out of the back seat, so it was everywhere. I told Randy that I have been packing an extra set of clothes for these boys for the past 8 years, and today we finally needed them. I was proud of Randy helping me clean up because I know how much he hates vomit.

We continued on to Canyonlands and spent the rest of our day there. We did four hikes and so by the last hike everyone was dragging, even mom. Our favorite hike was Cave Springs because it had a rock overhang that gave a lot of shade. You could see the remains of old cowboy fires under the overhang. There were also two ladders to climb which the boys really enjoyed. This part of Canyonlands was not as fun as Island in the Sky which is closer to Moab. But it was also less crowded. There were probably 10 cars total in the whole park. We kept passing all the same people on the road and on our hikes.

The prickly pear cacti were in bloom and were so pretty.

At the end of one of our hikes--Roadside Ruin.

I love moments like this.

The Cave Springs Trail was fun...and shady!

The best part was the ladder, of course.

We saw a million lizards.

We headed toward Blanding after we walked the kids to exhaustion, but stopped in Monticello for dinner. Once we got to the hotel, Randy and I had this vision of the boys dropping into bed and falling asleep. Little did we know that hotels are like sugar highs and they make children bounce off the walls. They finally did calm down and fell asleep around 9:45.

On our hike around the Potholes that were all dried up.
We still had fun!

We loved having the crow on our van after a hike!
We are bird lovers after all.

Dax is always climbing on something.

These boys love their water breaks.