Summer Vacation: Utah

We survived the road construction delays while driving the lonely, deserted desert roads from Colorado to Utah and made it to our Moab Airbnb townhouse.  It was a great little home base for our few days of exploring the eastern Utah national parks.

Our townhouse was on the outskirts of Moab.  After spending the first portion of our week in hotels, it was nice to have a place to settle for a couple of days...more space, more bathrooms, laundry, and some nice scenic views to boot.

We got settled into our place and went into Moab for dinner at Miguel's Baja Grill.  It was a cute little Mexican place on the main strip, and the food was very yummy.  After dinner, we wandered along the strip before heading back to our Airbnb.

I am a vacation optimizer.  I want to make the most of our time in new places.  I had contemplated bouncing everyone out of bed super early to catch the sunrise in Arches National Park, but Zach seemed to think that might not be fully appreciated by all members of the family.  So instead, we all slept in, went for runs around the complex, and then spent several hours just swimming at the community pool.  The kids made friends with some other kids and had a great time playing games and swimming.  Although sunrise in the park didn't get crossed off my list, I have to admit that the lazy morning and swimming fun was probably a better memory than sleepy, grumpy, complaining kids getting dragged out of bed too early.

After swimming and showering and lunching and relaxing at our townhouse, we headed into Arches National Park mid-afternoon to start our first day of Utah exploration.

We started our day off hiking and climbing around the Windows section of arches.  Although very people-y, we enjoyed the impressive natural wonders of Double Arch, North Window, South Window, and Turret Arch.

All 4 of those arches were in close proximity to one another and all accessible from the same parking lot.

The day was warm, but not overly hot.  It was a blue skies and sunshine kinda day for hiking and exploring.

After leaving the Windows area, we made our way over to do the 3 mile roundtrip hike to Delicate Arch.  We tried to plan it a low time in the later afternoon...after most of the day crowds were leaving but before the sunset crowds started to arrive.

It was a fun hike...mostly a steady incline up a rocky surface to reach the most iconic arch in the park...

Delicate Arch!

Our timing was great to miss the crowds...it was relatively uncrowded while we were there, although we couldn't get selfie-guy to move out from underneath the arch for our family picture...or any of the other pictures that people wanted to take for a solid 15-20 minute window.

After hiking back from Delicate Arch, we then headed over to Sand Dune Arch and Broken Arch.  Although Zach and Adelie just waited for the rest of us to walk the .4 miles roundtrip to check out the Sand Dune Arch (we know how Zach feels about sand dunes), we all then headed for the 1.2 mile roundtrip hike to Broken Arch.

For as many people as we saw at the Windows section and Delicate Arch, we were the ONLY people at Broken Arch.  It was delightful!

Although we couldn't really see the sunset from Broken Arch, the sunset sky was beautiful as we hiked back to our car before driving back to our Airbnb for a snack-y dinner of cereal and yogurt and whatever else anyone could find to eat.

We got an earlier start our next day so we could explore Canyonlands National Park.

We started our day with the short, easy .5 mile loop to Mesa Arch.   It provided a novel and beautiful view of the expanse of canyons.

We followed up our Mesa Arch hike with the 1.8 mile roundtrip Grand View Point hike, which was just a walk along the rim of with beautiful panoramic views.

After some confusion and wandering around and a bit of driving just to end up almost back where we started, we FINALLY found the trailhead for the White Rim Overlook.  The plus side of the slightly hidden trailhead (which wasn't even on the park map) was that this hike provided a little solitude as we saw very few other people on this hike.

It was another short (1.8 miles roundtrip) hike leading to more panoramic views of the canyon.

After some rest, snacks, and goofing around while enjoying the views, we made our way back to our car and headed back into Moab for lunch and for Adelie to use her souvenir money on a necklace she wanted.

We ate lunch at Gloria's in Moab, enjoying some yummy sandwiches and smoothies on the beautiful outdoor patio.

After lunch, we said good-bye to the beauty of Utah as we returned to Colorado for the last few days of our trip.

Summer Vacation: Colorado

Making the most of a summer vacation is something I pride myself on.  Unfortunately, more often now, our vacations are at the mercy of our children's busy schedules.  Although I would have loved to have 10-14 days to explore the national parks in Colorado and Utah, we had to fit in our summer trip between the middle school state track meet and the beginning of summer NTA classes.  So although my ideal would have been 10-14 days, 7 days it was.  But we sure did squeeze a lot of exploration and fun into those 7 days!!

Staley ran in her state track meet on Saturday afternoon, and then we left for our vacation on Sunday morning.  To make the most of our time, we decided to pay the extra money for the convenience of flying direct from Peoria to Denver.

We arrived in Denver by 10:30 in the morning, grabbed our rental car, stopped for some Blazing Bird sandwiches (for Staley, Zach, and I) and Noodles (for Briggs and Adelie) before arriving in Colorado Springs in the early afternoon.

We headed straight to our first official stop of the trip... Garden of the Gods.

We parked at the visitor's center and then did the short 1-mile hike/walk to Balanced Rock.

Although we had a map and directions, we wandered around quite a bit before finding the Siamese Twins trailhead, which was our other planned hike for the day.  Once we located it, we did the 1-mile loop trail to the Siamese Twins rock formation.

We explored a bit, the kids climbed around on the rocks, and then we finished the loop back to the visitor's center.  After our little bit of hiking, we shopped a bit at the visitor's center store and then went to check in to our Holiday Inn Express Manitou Springs.  We grabbed dinner at Savelli's, a good little pizza/pasta place right down the street from our hotel and then got settled in for a good night of sleep after our fun day.

After a good night of sleep and a hotel breakfast, we Ubered to the train station for our Cograil train ride up to Pike's Peak.  One particular member of the family was especially excited about riding the train.

The train ride was scenic and informative...and way less scary than driving on all the switchbacks and drop offs along the road up to Pike's Peak.  We enjoyed seeing the mountains, the mountain lakes, and all the marmots outside the train window.

Once at the top, we enjoyed some of the famous donuts...

perused the museum...

and spent a brief amount of time in the chilly snowiness among the clouds to take a few pictures.

We relaxed on the train ride back down.  We had intended to hike the Manitou Incline in the afternoon, but a storm rolled in so we instead relaxed a bit at the hotel, swam in our hotel pool, and then went out for dinner at the Colorado Mountain Brewery.  It was fine.

 

After dinner, we went into downtown Manitou Springs to explore a bit.  We enjoyed walking along the main strip, popping into stores, enjoying the senior pictures that lined the street lamps (the boy in the kilt holding the skull was by far the favorite), and then stopping into Josh and John's ice cream shop for some very scrumptious ice cream.  We went back to our hotel, packed up, and tried to get some rest before another big day.

We had an early morning the next day as we had about an hour drive to our next family adventure...white water rafting!  After our early hotel breakfast, we loaded up and headed to Echo Canyon River Expeditions in Carson City, CO.

We spent over 2 hours rafting in the Bighorn Sheep Canyon section of the Arkansas River.  (Unfortunately, we did not see any big horn sheep here.)  Our family had our own raft and guide within our group of 4 rafts.  The kids' favorite part, of course, of the rapids.  We got caught up on a rock at one point, Adelie had a 'near miss' when she almost fell out of the raft, and Staley slipped into the water during a small break we took, but otherwise it was all smooth (and sometimes rough) sailing.

We had a lot of fun with our river rafting adventure.  All 3 kids listed white water rafting as one of their top highlights from our trip.

After our white water rafting adventure, we got changed into our dry clothes and then hit the road towards our next destination.  We stopped at Sweetie's Sandwich Shop in Salida, CO, which we really enjoyed!  They had great, healthy sandwiches and yummy, not so healthy desserts.

We arrived at our first National Park of the trip in the later afternoon.  Zach was less than enthused about this stop as he has very little use for sand or dunes, but he was overruled.  (Really, when it comes to trip planning, it's more of a dictatorship than a democracy anyway.  Thankfully I'm typically a really good and fun trip dictator!)

Great sand dunes is quite the geographic wonder.  It's just crazy as you are driving through Colorado and see this HUGE sandy area plunked down between all the snow-capped and tree covered mountains.

The kids were initially very gung-ho about hiking up the sand dunes.  Zach wasn't feeling well and chose to just stay by the car while we explored.  We started strong, but walking in sand is wearing, the dunes were big, some rain started to come down, and the wind picked up.  As the wind was pelting us with sand, 2/3 of the kids lost their hiking gumption. Briggs ran down a big dune to get away from the sand while Adelie was upset by the pelting sand, preoccupied about a potential storm, and worried about why Briggs was at the bottom of the dune when we were at the top.  There may have been tears.

It was about that time that we decided to turn back and head back down the dunes.  We hiked back to the car where Staley and Adelie both did streak-keeper miles around the parking lot before we loaded up and got back on the road.

We stopped at Freddie's for some car dinner as we made our way to the Baymont by Wyndham in Cortez, CO right outside Mesa Verde National Park.  The hotel itself was definitely dated (with an inside pool in the middle surrounded by all the hotel rooms), but it was clean and comfortable and had the best and biggest free hotel breakfast that we've maybe ever had.

After our night in Cortez and our large and scrumptious hotel breakfast, we headed to Mesa Verde National Park.  The drive from the front of the park to where most of the sites are actually located is a bit of a drive, so we gave ourselves plenty of time as we didn't want to be late for our guided tour.

We got to our destination with plenty of time to spare, so we started our day driving the Cliff Palace Loop.  We got our first look at the cliff dwellings.  They were incredible!

We then made our way to the Balcony House for our guided tour.  This was definitely the highlight of our day!  Our tour guide was excellent...super knowledgeable and passionate.  Although Staley was a bit annoyed about having to learn while on summer break, we all really enjoyed getting up close to the cliff dwellings.

Our tour had a couple of big ladders you had to climb as well as some small tunnels and narrow walk-throughs that you had to walk or crawl through.  The kids enjoyed the more adventurous nature of the tour.

It was really cool to think about how these dwellings were actually made...and how they are still so well-preserved after all this time.  I'm not always a big history person, but I was fascinated.

We all really enjoyed the tour!  It was definitely a highlight of the entire trip.

Following our tour, we hiked the 2.4 mile Petroglyph trail loop.

It was a beautiful, scenic trail with a little rock scrambling and climbing, which is always a favorite.

And, of course, it wouldn't be the petroglyph trail if it didn't involve some ancient petroglyphs.  The handprints were our favorite.

We finished off our day at Mesa Verde National Park by checking out the museum at the gift shop and then driving the Mesa Top Loop.  We stopped at a variety of the viewpoints to see overlooks of some of the other various cliff dwellings like Square Tower House (with a 4 story dwelling), as well as some pit houses and pueblos.  The kids sometimes get tired of stopping at all the scenic overlooks along a drive, but they mostly humored us.

Instead of heading straight to Moab for the next part of our journey, we took a quick detour to visit the 4 Corners...where we were able to mark Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona off our lists of states that we've been in...

all at the same time!

I was a little disillusioned by the $8 (PER PERSON!!) entrance fee and had decided that it was racket and we should just leave.  However, Zach decided that it was silly to add a few hours to our trip to not actually do what we came to do.  So I acquiesced...although I put my foot down about buying any overpriced snacks or drinks while we were there.  A gals gotta have her convictions!

Although I found the entrance fee to be a racket, we enjoyed the stop.  We left the 4 Corners, but had to deal with some very long and unfortunate road construction delays on our way to our next destination... Moab, Utah!