Move to Utah: Day 7 - Hiking in Arches

The kids woke up early on Sunday morning.  Like really early.  They were up around 5:30.  This was thanks to a little thing called being-in-mountain-time-but-being-used-to-central-time.  We used it to our advantage though.  We got all the kids dressed and packed everything up for the day.  Then we just had to wait for the Breakfast place downstairs to open up.  That didn't happen until 6:30 so we watched PowerRangers on the Disney Channel.  I'm not sure what the kids thought about that show.  

Anyway, we went to breakfast and then went back to our room.  Before we'd left on our trip I'd packed all the kids clothes into a box and labeled it "open in case of winter."  That box had been in the jeep during our whole trip.  Brandon had grabbed it the night before and now we opened it up and introduced the kids to their winter coats.  They'd all worn these  coats before, but that was in Alabama.  In Alabama you kind of need a winter coat at the bus stop in the morning during January and February, but by the afternoon it's more like jacket weather.  This would be our first experience with "real winter."

 And what an experience it was. The kids all slipped on this patch of ice.  I couldn't help see more parallels to the movie Cool Runnings.

 But hey, at least the scenery was pretty.

 We drove over to the Target where Brandon had parked the moving truck.  As per our agreement with the store we were gone well before 8:00 am.

Then it was time to start driving west some more.  Our route along I-70 took us through beautiful Glenwood Canyon.

 I couldn't help myself from taking a lot of pictures of this canyon - even if they were through the bug splattered windshield.

 As usual Derrick and Veronica thought the tunnels were so fun.

 More pretty canyon.  My favorite thing about this canyon are the parts where the two sections of the highway are almost stacked on top of each other.

 We reached the end of the canyon and Derrick and Veronica were ready to get out of the car. So we stopped at the "No Name" rest stop for a break.  Derrick wanted to go throw rocks in the Colorado River.

 And he made a beeline for the river as soon as I said he could.

Veronica wasn't very far behind him. 

 They had a lot of fun throwing rocks into the water.

 Derrick probably would have stayed there all day if I'd let him.

 I basically had to carry him away from the water.  But I told him that we were going to do something else pretty cool that day.  I told him that we were going to see "red rock tunnels" (arches) that afternoon.  So he happily got in the car and looked forward to seeing those "red rock tunnels."

Pretty soon we were driving out of Colorado and into Utah.  Our long journey was nearing it's end.

 We could have just kept driving and arrived in Salt Lake within a few hours.  But where would the fun be in that?  Instead I'd made us a reservation at a hotel in Green River, Utah so that we could have time to have a few adventures in Southeastern Utah.  It was only about 12:30, but our room was already clean so the lady at the front desk let us check in early.  Brandon was only a few minutes behind me on the road and he met us in our hotel room.

 Then we left the moving van parked at the hotel while we drove the Honda 50 miles down to Arches National Park.

Arches National Park is one of my favorite places on earth. My parents brought me here when I was 6.  My aunt Vera brought me and my siblings down here when I was about 14.  Brandon and I included this place on our Southern Utah Road Trip when I was 25.  Last time we visited Arches was three years ago on our way to Utah in December of 2013.  Charlotte and Lydia were barely 3, Derrick was not even 2, and Veronica was 3 months old.  Even having kids the young hadn't stopped us from taking them on a short hike through the snow to the North window.  

This time we had bigger kids which meant we could make bigger plans for how to spend our time in the park.  We wanted to take them on the 3 mile round trip hike to Delicate Arch!

First we had to stop off at the visitor center for water, a potty break, and posing with statues of animals. 

And then we drove into the park and found our way to the Delicate Arch trail head.  The kids all were pretty excited about starting out on the hike.  

We could see either the North or South window from the trail.

The girls wanted to pose with every single rock on the trail.

And I mean every

single

rock.

I kept telling the girls to save their energy for the trail, but they kept wanting to jump on the rocks. After a while (like 5 minutes) the kids started whining about how they were tired and wanted to rest.  Charlotte was so happy to finally make it to this tree where she could take a break.

Veronica decided that she'd rather hike in style.  (And Brandon was in style thanks to my shopping trip at Target the day before.)

Here they are heading up the slick rock portion of the trail.

It was fun to look back down the trail and see how far we had come.

Here are the kids making it up the trail.

Charlotte had been whining about how she was so tired.  I distracted her by pointing out the cairns on the trail.  She liked those.

Derrick was such a funny hiker.  Back at the hotel he'd found some brochures for places that offered train rides.  He was so engrossed in looking at those brochures that I'm not sure he even knew we were on a hike.

Our conversation up the hill when something like this.

Lydia: My leg hurts!
Me: Just keep going, the trail will be level soon.
Charlotte: I'm so tired.
Me: We are almost there.
Veronica: NO WALKING!!!!!!!!!!
Me: Brandon can you carry her again?
Brandon: I'll carry you in a minute.
Derrick: Dah Dah Dah Train. Dah Dah Dah Train Tracks.  Pictures of TRAINS.

Actually this is pretty much how every conversation goes in our family.  The only difference is the scenery.

Somehow we kept making it up the slick rock part of the trail.

Soon the trail did level out and the moral of our kids improved.

Veronica decided that it would be a great idea to start pretending to be a dog.  She got down on all four and crawled through the sand while pretending to bark and pant.

Since she was going so slow I was able to take pictures of the beautiful scenery.

Soon it was time to go up the ledge part of the trail.  I'd been kind of worried about how they kids would react. When I was 6 my dad had taken me on this hike and I'd been sooooo scared of this ledge.  Years later, when Vera took us here, my sister Hillary was only 4.  We'd worried that she'd be scared, but instead she did a little mincing walk and said in a mincing voice, "I'm not scared at all."  So I was a little curious how my kids would react.

They actually were all pretty fine.  Lydia even stopped to have me take a picture of her monkey Banana.

As it turned out the kids were a little too comfortable with the ledge - especially a certain little three year old.

I hurried up to hold her had shortly after I took this picture.

Derrick even looked up from his train pictures long enough to admire the drop off.

My siblings and I had named this "skate boarders paradise."

Veronica was pretty mad that I wouldn't let her walk by herself and so retaliated by refusing to walk at all.  So I had to carry her.

And finally we rounded a the bend and could see Delicate Arch!

We stopped to have some snacks.  (The thought of these snacks is what had kept the kids going during the last little bit.)

We figured that we couldn't come all this way and not get a picture by the arch.  So we carefully walked over there.  We weren't sure what the kids would do if we stood in the middle of the arch so we stayed on the side where it was safer.

Charlotte and Lydia (and Banana) wanted a picture with this rock.

And these rocks.  (They'd made their own cairn and were so proud.)

Going down the trail seemed to go a lot faster than going up.  Probably because we could see the parking lot most of the time.  I told Brandon that this was the best hike to Delicate Arch I'd ever been on.  The weather wasn't hot at all, but it also wasn't cold.

We made it down to the bottom of the trail.  Charlotte had to go to the bathroom so Brandon ran ahead with her.  That reminded me of the last time I'd gone on this hike.  I'd been pregnant with the twins (but I didn't know it because I'm pretty clueless when it comes to understanding my body)  I'd had to pee so bad and basically ran down the whole trail to make it to the bathroom.

The girls had been really excited about seeing Balanced Rock.  At first they'd talked about getting out of the car to walk around it, but after our 3 mile hike they were content to just look at it from the car.

After that we started driving out of the park.  It got dark as we drove out.

Brandon and I talked for a second about taking the kids to get ice cream at the McDonalds in Moab.  But we decided against that idea.  We didn't want the kids getting hoped up on sugar before bed time.  We also realized that EVERYONE in the park was heading to Moab for dinner so we shouldn't try to do the same thing.  Instead we just went back to Green River and had another snacky dinner in the hotel room.

I'm having a hard time remembering what we did the rest of the evening.  I'm guessing the kids went to bed pretty easy.  I know that Brandon stayed up for a while working on applying for an FAA job. The job had randomly showed up and it closed the next day so he had to get on it.

After he finished that we went to bed.  We had plans to explore the San Rafael Swell the next day before heading up to Salt Lake.

Move to Utah: Day 6 - We discover winter in Colorado

The kids sort of slept in on Saturday morning.  They slept until 7:00.  When Charlotte woke up she looked out the window and said, "it's still dark! it's not morning yet."  I tried explaining that in Alabama we lived on one edge of the Central Time Zone and so we were used to the sun rising really early.  Now we were on the other edge so the sun didn't rise as soon.  But she didn't really understand that. 

Our motel in Colby, Kansas was one of those places that said they offered a continental breakfast, but really only had cereal and bread.  So rather than go there for breakfast we decided that we should treat ourselves to breakfast at Village Inn.  

Now let me do some backstory for you.  The last time we took the kids to eat anywhere besides a fast food restaurant was back in 2013 when we were on vacation in San Antonio.  We'd gone to Denny's Charlotte and Lydia weren't even 2 1/2 and Derrick wasn't even one yet.  The kids had used up all their "good behavior time" waiting for a table and waiting for our food.  By the time our food arrived they were all completely done with sitting still.  We basically had to put our food into the to go boxes as soon as it arrive. 

We never took our kids to eat anywhere besides a fast food place again.    

So it was with a great deal of trepidation that we considered going to Village Inn.  But we figured that Veronica was now older than Charlotte and Lydia had been during that Denny's run so it might go better this time.  

It actually went really well.  We were able to get a table right away. We were all freezing so Brandon ordered hot chocolate for everyone. That was fun.  We ordered a bunch of french toast for the kids and skillets for us.  The kids behaved really well and ate all their food.  

Kids do grow up.  It really does happen.  

We went back to the car and found something shocking.  I'd spilled a bunch of water by accident on the ground right before we went into the restaurant.  When we came back out an hour later it was FROZEN.  

FROZEN!

This, combined with the little ice shapes that had formed on the car overnight, had me kind of freaking out. I've avoided winter ever since December of 2013 so I was not exactly thrilled about this. In a lot of ways I felt like I was reenacting all scenes from the movie Cool Runnings.  I kept saying, "Winter as in ICE?"

Anyway, my weather misgivings none the less, we got back on the road and continued driving west.  We'd reached I-70 the night before so we were done with our little off the interstate adventures.  When I originally planned this trip I'd assumed we do it at the beginning of September.  During that version of the trip we would take a southern route through Colorado on Highway 160.  However, that plan got cancelled when this trip was moved to November and included a moving truck.  I did not want to take a moving truck up the high elevation passes in the wintertime.

Honestly, we weren't even sure how the moving truck would work going over the passes on the Interstate.

But those mountains were still miles away.  The land was very flat during the first part of the drive.

But gradually we could see the Rocky Mountains in the distance.

We didn't have any special places to visit on this part of the trip. I'd been hoping to visit some special people though.  My Aunt Diane lives near Denver so I talked to her about stopping by for a visit.  I also wanted to see Audrey who is one of my favorite online friends.  But I ended up cancelling both visits on account of the whole travelling-with-a-moving-van-that-was-towing-a-car situation. Just thinking about trying to navigate the moving van through the streets of Denver gave me anxiety.

So we cruised through Denver without stopping and headed into the Rocky Mountains.

The drive wasn't that bad for me.  The roads were clear and dry which was good considering there was snow on the sides of the road.

But Brandon had quite the time going up the steep hills. The moving truck didn't have "guts" as Brandon described it.  He said that it could barely go 35 miles per hour up the hills.  As a result I ended up about 4 hours ahead of Brandon.

Derrick and Veronica thought the tunnels were so much fun.

Our destination for the day was Dillon, Colorado. Years ago Brandon had been to this area and wanted had always wanted to come back with his future family.  We'd stopped here for little bit during our Colorado road trip in 2012, but I thought it would be fun to stay here overnight.

Derrick and Veronica and I arrived in Dillon around 1:00.  We couldn't check into our hotel until 4:00.  I figured we could ask about early check in, but first I wanted to spend some time exploring the town.  

We ended up at a very exotic place called Target. Actually all joking aside, this Target did seem very foreign to me. When we walked in there were aisles and aisles of coats right at the front of the store.  I just kind of stared at all those coats in wonder.  And all the people in the store were dressed like they were in a ski catalog.  They had puffy coats and boots.  I was there in a jacket and my black flats. This was like a whole new culture to me. 

We bought some more fresh food to eat on the rest of our trip.  I also bought more casual clothes for Brandon.  He's been wearing Army uniforms for so long that he doesn't have a lot of casual pants and shirts.  He'd mentioned that he'd probably have to do laundry during part of our trip.  I'd replied that if he didn't have enough clothes to make it to Utah then I'd just buy him new ones.  And that's what I did. 

After finishing up at Target we found a park where the kids could play.  Derrick and Veronica showed off their snow ignorance by taking off their shoes to play on the playground. I at least got smart and dug out my tennis shoes and changed out of my flats.  

We played at the park for a long time.  Veronica made friends with a family with a big lab dog.  That girl loves dogs so much. Derrick ran around and climbed all over everything.

Brandon and the twins finally found us.  Brandon had quite a few crazy stories about his stressful drive up the mountain.  Charlotte and Lydia ran around the park and then decided to play in the snow.  They were so excited to lay in the snow and make snow angels.  Brandon and I tried to warn them, but the girls didn't listen when we explained that they needed coats.  Here is the exact moment when Lydia learned that snow is cold and that cold can hurt.

Brandon left the moving truck parked on the side of the road by the park and we all piled into the Honda and went to our hotel.  Everyone was happy to be warm again.  We spent a lot of time watching the Property Brothers on HGTV.  After a few of the kids fell asleep Brandon went took the Honda back to moving van and then set out to find somewhere that allowed overnight parking for the moving van.  He ended up making a deal with Target.  He could park overnight in their side parking lot as long as it was gone by the time the store opened at 8:00 the next morning.  When I found that out I was pretty happy that I'd decided to spend so much money at that particular store. 

This was probably the first night since we'd started driving that I stayed up later than all four of the kids. Brandon made it back and we were able to actually have a conversation together without kids listening in.  

Even with steep roads and cold weather we were both very happy to be on this road trip.  It certainly beat sitting around in Alabama waiting for news.