Arches. Day two.

                  Mentality the entire trip:  Oh look!  An enormous rock!  Let's climb it!

 

Tim was amused to find out that my brother in his younger years had piled up mounds of sand beneath this particular arch and jumped into it from the top of the arch.  Teenagers those days...

Oh, don't mind her.  She's just relieving herself.  My kids marked their territory along many a trail.

 I love this place.  The kids were absolute champs, letting us march them to and fro in the heat and way past their bedtime.  What a family vacation.

Adventureland, a.k.a. Moab, Utah.

The next stop on our trip was Moab, Utah.  Here was a familiar place, one to which I'd hopped away with friends many a weekend during my college years at BYU.  It's basically a high-risk sport lover's mecca.  Rock-climbing, mountain biking, white-water-rafting, hiking - you name it, Moab's got it.  We stuck to hiking.  As soon as we set up camp (in the 90 degree heat) we took a dip in the campground pool and retired for the night.  Can I just say how much more I enjoy tent camping when I'm not frantically checking to see if all four of my children are not suffering from hypothermia in the middle of the night?  Sure, the trade off is that when you want to take a mid-afternoon breather, it's torture, but boy, did we sleep effortlessly at night.  My kind of camping. 

Now, if you've ever been to Moab and spent any time in Arches National Park, you know that you have to hit up a famous Utah icon, Delicate Arch.  People come from around the world to see this anomalous formation.  I've been there many times.  Enough times to know that the only I was going to get my kids to tackle the 3.2 mile roundtrip hike was if we woke up at the crack of dawn to beat the heat.  I warned and forewarned my kids that this was going to happen and that it was going to be worth it.  Most of them were compliant.  Except for the 6-year-old, who couldn't shake herself out of slumber.  So I dressed her myself.  When she finally came to, she remarked, "Mom, how did my clothes get on?"  Yep, she was definitely out.

We didn't see a ton of kids out that morning - we were the smart ones.  We made it up the mountain and back before it reached 85 degrees.  And laughed at all the young families who were just starting the ascent.  

 

                                                                Spectacular, isn't it?

 Tim and Anna loved setting up these goofy shots of one person or another supporting an arch or something.  More to come...

Like this one.

 

 

Many of our hikes resembled this stretch: steep cliff on one side, sheer drop-off on the other.  Combine that with squirrely kids who have no healthy fear of death and it makes for a mom with hypertension.

 

 

                                                  Ahhh, shade!  Measured in square inches.

                                                        How Eve spent many a hike.

Silly girl.

Just can't get enough.

                                                   Arches at sunset.  Nothin' like it.

                                      Spectacular end to day one.  Hiked till we dropped.

Onto Bryce!

I'd never been to Bryce Canyon National Park.  I'd skirted the edge of it on a road trip eons ago, but never basked in its glory.  This was my time.  Except that I got super sick the morning we drove there and ended up having to take a rest every fifty yards we walked the first day.  Tim kept the girls from jumping over the edge while I wallowed in my misery, so I'm content.  We slept in a teepee just outside the park and spent a few hours the next morning making up for lost time.

This place is perhaps the most stunning of any national park I've seen.  Yes, that includes Zion, which is breathtaking in its own way.  The natural light against the formations is a landscape photographer's dream... not that I would know, as you'll be able to tell by the quality of our pictures.  :)

Pretty much every corner we turned caused us to utter enormous sighs of wonder at the beauty that surrounded us on every side.  Oh, I hope I get the opportunity to return to Bryce and hike more of its trails...

The girls were naughty that day.



Our visit was short but sweet.  And I could totally see why most of the tourists there were not speaking a lick of English.  It's worth traveling across the globe.

Our first summer trip. In increments.

We ushered the kids into the car the moment school got out so we could drive down to St. George to visit some of our favorite cousins.  Grandma, Grandpa, uncles, aunts and more cousins joined us for the party.  It was all I could have hoped for. 

 

Chillin' with a book on the balcony of our St. George condo.

 

More chillin'.  Just not the bookish sort.

 

Beating the summer heat at the river.

 

We bought this hat especially for this occasion.  It saved Tim's skin (and our trip).

 

On an early morning hike.  Because, let's face it, it's the only kind you can do during the summer in St. George.

I prefer hikes to a destination.  This was it - a waterfall that was no longer a waterfall.  We can thank the dry spring for that.

One final brunch with beloved friends.  What a fantastic end to a wonderful visit to St. George.