Day 5 ~ A Day of Adventures

True to our theme, we took the scenic route twice on our drive today and it was amazing!!  This was the best day to date as far as scenic views go!

The morning started out with a good laugh.  The bags of chips we bought in Kansas at a lower elevation had now puffed up with the air pressure change in Colorado Springs!  Later on the road trip as we climbed even higher, we heard popping sounds and realized it was the chip bags exploding!

After packing the car from our lovely Drury stay, we drove down the road to the Focus on the Family headquarters.  Our first and most important stop was the Adventures in Odyssey village.  It was such an imaginative space - so much thought went into the layout and the decorations!  We had to make a stop at Whit's End for ice cream, and the whole family participated in a Kid's Radio recording.  Levi was also asked to take part in an interview production they were putting together, and we may see him later this summer on their website after they put it together.  Before we left, we had a tour of the FOTF administration building and learned about all their ministries.  

Our travels today took us from Colorado Springs to Moab, UT.  On our way out of town, we decided to take the scenic route and avoided Denver.  We enjoyed so many more amazing things this way:  drove through the Garden of the (false) gods, saw the Balanced Rock, took a closer route past Pike's Peak, drove through the Hoosier Pass and got to an elevation of over 11,000 ft at the Continental Divide, and we found a gorgeous spot to have our picnic lunch.  This was right about the time all those puffed up bags of chips exploded!

The long drive across Colorado was beautiful!  So many steep, snow-capped mountains.  We saw more pronghorn and I finally got a photo of them.  The kids slept most of the way.  We ended up following the Colorado River most of the way, and one of our rest stops was along the river where we put our feet in it! It was so cold!!  As we got closer to Utah, the mountains started changing from the typical "Rockies" to the huge red rock formations.  I don't know what they are called, but they were incredible to see!  And this song popped in my head... 

Lord of all creation
Of water, earth and sky
The heavens are Your tabernacle
Glory to the Lord on High

God of wonders beyond our galaxy
You are holy, holy
The universe declares Your majesty
You are holy, holy

It's just amazing to see God's unique creations up close!!

After arriving in Utah, we decided again to take the scenic route and get off the highway and follow the Colorado River into Moab.  At first we thought we had made the wrong choice as we ended up in no-man's land!  The rough road was poorly paved, no lines, and the landscape looked like we were in the middle of an abandoned town!  In fact, the "town" we went through, Cisco, was sort of a ghost town (look up the history - it's really cool!) and we saw so many old, falling down buildings.

As we drove along, we found bunches of prairie dogs!  They were running all around!  We also saw wild turkeys.  

We finally made it to a paved road with dividing lines and felt better about our scenic route choice.  We had a long, windy drive along the river with more of those huge red rock mountains on both sides.  It was probably our favorite driving part of the trip so far.  The sun was setting during our last hour and it created the most beautiful rich color on the mountains.  

Our Day 5 ended with a quick check in at our hotel, the Aarchway Motel, and a delicious pizza dinner in town.  

So tired tonight.  And there are so many photos to share!!!!