After only ~ 4 hours of driving (with a break at ~2 hours in Price), we turned the corner and literally the mountains became the distinctive red color that you see on famous pictures. It was a beautiful site to see! So different from what we normally see with big evergreen trees, green grass, green plants of all shapes and sizes, green mountains with snow capped peaks. This was almost mars-like to us! Red mountains, rocks galore, sage brush, sun so bright in the sky.
We arrived at my Aunt’s house just south of Moab, hugged and chatted a bit and decided to get the kids out and explore a little waterfall area right behind my Aunt’s house. I think it’s a man-made waterfall, but a little waterfall none the less. A little drive in our rental car (probably not in the contract to drive on unpaved roads, but oh well – Lance loved it!) and we were there. The hike was very short for us sea-level people and the views were great! The kids and all of us got to stretch our legs a bit after the long car ride.
Lance took Alex up a bit of the hillside on his first (but not the last) rock climbing and they loved it!
The two sisters were just chatting away and enjoying seeing each other for the first time in ~ 10 years.
We then went to another area right nearby that had some amazing holes in the rock. Lance wanted to climb up and so he did, with two kids in tow. I stayed down to take pictures, but it looked pretty fun!
We came back after successfully stretching our legs and the kids played with bubble water, the rocking swing in the backyard and just had a dandy time. My cousin Becky came over with her daughter, Peyton (10 years old) and newborn baby girl, Addison (literally fresh and new at 6 weeks old). It was so great to see Becky after all this time and meet her daughters for the first time too! The kids had a wonderful time playing together.
We settled into our home away from home – the trailer. It was very comfortable. We had the kids sleep together, which took some getting used to for them and us. There were many kicks and “Mom – Sara hit me” and “No look me brudder”, but finally they fell asleep. We made some adjustments with who was sleeping on the inside and which way they were laying the next night and it went much better. Sara only fell off the little bed onto the hard floor once that first night, but it was enough in the middle of the night to scare her and it took her a while to get back to sleep. By the end of our stay, we were pros at sleeping in our home away from home.
I woke up that morning and felt like a truck had literally run me over. I wasn’t sick, but something was definitely up. Well, after some symptom checks with the locals (Aunt and Uncle) and my trusty Mom and husband, we think I had allergies. There was a lot of pollen in the air, it was very dry there, and so we tried some allergy pills and voila! My problems were solved! Another thing about this area is because it is so dry, we carried lots of water everywhere we went. It turns out I also developed a headache. Not totally unusual, but this was a different headache. All I could describe it as was “the light is so bright here”. My cousin recommended polarized sunglasses and we went to get me a pair. They are a miracle, I tell you, a miracle. The allergy pills combined with my new polarized lenses and I was set for the rest of the trip.
That next day we went on a longer hike somewhere North of town, down some unmarked dirt roads that went on for quite a while. Let’s just say, you had to know where you were going… Glad we were following my Uncle Bill and Aunt Carolyn!
On the hike, Alex found a real sharpened rock made by Native Americans way back. It was definitely sharp and in an unnatural shape. As we began to look around, we found quite a few – so cool!
Alex was so interested in the dessert – he had learned about this type of landscape while studying the continents. He knew that desserts had cactus and he was so interested to see one. He was a little disappointed when he didn’t see the Saguaro type cactus. All we saw were these smaller cactuses that definitely had pointy sharp spines though. Guess who had to test that out?
It was a nice hike on a fairly unmarked trail out in the Utah wilderness. Again, we were glad we were being guided about where to go. There were some pictographs that they were taking us to see. We could see them close up and we thought this was so cool!
We learned something new on this trip about these and other drawings. Petroglyphs is a rock engraving whereas a Pictograph is an image painted or drawn on rock. We saw both on this trip to Moab, but this hike was all about Pictographs.
Family picture in Moab!
Sara was nearing her nap and I had to take her back to the car. She was just melting in to a puddle of toddler-hood. Sadly, I didn’t get to see the last Pictographs of the handprints, but there were in this slot like canyon that when you entered, Lance said it was so cool (temperature wise) compared to the surroundings. Very cool indeed!
Then, we drove back towards Moab and took a turn right off the main highway. There was a camping area right there and to the side, a fenced area. Didn’t look like much at all until you got up close inside the fence…. REAL DINOSAUR TRACKS! In this greenish-blue mud from back how many millions of years ago, dinosaurs laid down their foot prints right there and here they were for us to see! One area showed some dinosaur tracks where it put down it’s tail (maybe it was slipping) so there were footprints and a long print that was clearly a tail. There were different shaped foot prints and ones that were going this way and that. Apparently this place had been “discovered” after a big rain storm and the locals put some fencing up surrounding it to preserve it and keep the roaming cows off of it. It wouldn't be like this forever, as the greenish mud seemed relatively fragile. It wasn’t rock, more like a really hard mud type substance. We felt so lucky to see this and we all had a great time!
Oh yes, again he was so interested in those cactuses!
To be continued…
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