Club Wanderlust: Road trip to moab, UTAH

We started out this vacation a little different than all the rest...we drove, and we had three beautiful little girls with us! We drove, and drove, and drove, starting from Salt Lake City it's about a four hour drive until you reach the Green River, where we were staying. It's a beautiful drive, especially if you drive around sunset, you get to see the brown mountains turn into red rocks. Green River is a little town(and when I say little, I mean little.) It's pretty much just one street. It's about forty five minutes outside of Arches National park.

The next morning we woke up early and drove to Arches national park. Let me tell you, if you've never been there, it's a must see in your life. There is nothing else like it in the world. The whole day we spent climbing rocks and taking lots of pictures. A few recommendations if you've never been there..there are no gas stations or places to get food or water anywhere in the national park...and the city of Moab could be anywhere from 25 minutes to 1 hour from you, depending on where you are in the park. So, make sure you bring plenty of snacks and water, and fill your car up with plenty of gas. We didn't hike up every trail but we did stop at most of the viewpoints that have spectacular views! Some of the hikes that we did do were: Balanced Rock(which is more of just a trail than a hike), Delicate Arch Viewpoint, and of course Delicate Arch.

We waited until sunset to hike up Delicate Arch because I was thinking that it would be fun to watch the arch get painted by the colors of sunset. I wouldn't recommend doing it this way...especially if you have kids with you. The problem was, it was very hot, probably 95*, it was the end of the day...so of course we were all pretty tired, it's a 3 mile hike, it takes about 2 to 3 hours and we started around 8pm. We got up to the arch and it was so beautiful! We stayed, and had just enough light to take pictures and chat with some people that also took the trek up the slick rock. We noticed people started heading back down the trail, but of course I wanted to see the stars and the arch and watch for shooting stars. This was a terrible decision! Suddenly everyone except for one photographer was gone, and we started to see mice, and hear crickets. That's when we realized it was beginning to get very very dark, and we needed to head back down the trail to our car. There was no moon that night. This was probably one of the scariest moments I have ever experienced in my whole entire life. I am not afraid of the dark (so I thought), but we were just not prepared in any sense of the word. The only flashlights we had were the ones on our phones. So we were walking and we could barely see two feet in front of us even with the flashlights...suddenly we start hearing what we thought were lots of crickets, but then the sound changed to a very distinct noise that we all knew, but didn't want to believe what we were hearing. You guessed it, we were hearing rattle snakes. At this point of course we all start freaking out. We still had about 45 minutes left of walking down the trail, that we couldn't really see, and now we could hear rattle snakes. Trust me, in that moment I think we all wished we could just disappear into the sand and skip the whole hike back down to the car. There were a lot of tears and shaking knees, and singing(Let it go from Frozen), even some praying. But we finally made it back to the car. We were so happy to finally be safe, and we ended the night by seeing thousands and thousands of stars, we even saw the milky way. Here's some pictures from our day:

The next morning we drove to another national park in the area called Dead Horse Point. It was really really cool, and has stunning views. The girls even became junior rangers, I guess they have a program for kids at every national park, where you can become a junior ranger by doing some pages of a packet, and pledging to keep the parks clean. It was really sweet! They get a badge and everything! From there we drove to Canyon lands and it was really big and had lots of trails as well just like Arches. I wish we had more time to spend there, because it was really really stunning. The girls did the junior ranger program there as well. We only had enough time to hike one trail, which was one of my favorite trails from the whole trip, it was called Mesa Arch. It's really good for kids and it has stunning views. After that we had to head back home. We loved this trip and would recommend it to anyone..young, old, couples. single, families. Just go. It's a must see!