Wild West Day Four

Straight away lets get to pictures. 

Arches National Park, UT

Balanced Rock

Teeny tiny triplets climbed way up high.

We stayed low.

"Slow congested area"

Windows

More climbing.

Lucy enjoyed finding "Lucy sized crevices"

Wild Life

Doin their junior ranger thing.

He was one of my favorite rangers so far. Was totally chill while the triplets barraged him with questions.

So I did myself some learnin’ at the visitor’s center. As we drove around the park the red rocks were prominent. I also noticed these blue green rocks. Against the red rocks they really stand out. It turns out it is made by volcanic ash that was exposed to an alcoline lake.

Back to cute pictures of the kids. We ate at atomic grill (delicious). They had bandannas as napkins, pictured here styled by Lucy.

The weather started climbing after lunch, like 101 degrees hot. So we took shelter back in the condo and swam in the pool. 

After yummy steak, salad, and Pasta dinner. Matt and I we t back out to watch the sunset. Thanks Anna and Daniel for playing with the kids!

The light changing and red rocks does something special. What that is, I’m not totally sure. But we enjoyed looking at it.

 Beginning of sunset the rocks glow.

Here closer to the end you can really see the purple mountains majesty.

Is it crows or a black panther?

Getting a little artsy fartsy.

Aaaah, chooo!

Theme of the trip.

This place is bonkers beautiful. It was hard to leave. But we will be back someday!

Wild West Day Three

Wow! We did A Lot of things today!

Day three saw us getting on the road before 6, a vacation miracle. The kids and I took Dramamine for our trip through the mountains, so I wasn’t really conscious for the first couple hours. I woke up to snow. At the continental divide. The kids weren’t that excited until they realized they could climb the rocks.

Matt being contemplative......

Further on, we had lunch at the legitimately beautiful "no name" rest stop. Look how happy the sienna looks in the mountains!

The girls were taken with these weird-dandelion on steroids- flowers.

Further down the road (and now it’s hot!) we were in Pallisades for some fruit stands and a lavender farm.

Inside they had lots of yummy things to try. Alex got a taste for some fruity balsamic with bread.

Just a little more down the road we found our first national park, Colorado National Monument.

What am I doing in this picture, did I mention we did a lot of things this day?

The drive to the top was beautiful and terrifying. I was going to call it a canyon, then monolith but wanted to be accurate, so this is from the nps website.

"Towering monoliths exist within a vast plateau and canyon panorama."

This is the view from right outside the visitor center where the kids did their junior ranger packet. That got sworn in by a new ranger.

Alex spotted the first lizard!

The drive from Colorado to Moab...wow.  Being from Iowa Mountains of any kind are impressive, so seeing 2 or 3 different types at the same time is overwhelming in a good way. As we got towards Moab the red rocks and cliffs and other formations I can’t name. On our way to the condo we passed by Arches and Matt could not help himself but get a brief preview. 

We finally made it to the condo and met our old friends Anna and Daniel and our new friend Frannie. The kids’ manic excitement was palpable. They talked and asked questions and played with Frannie. I suggested playing a game to slow them down but exploding kittens is not really the right game for that.