Day 6 ~ The Furthest West

Today marks the end of our first scenic route --  the "going" part of the trip.  Tomorrow we head to our ultimate destination, starting in Jackson Hole.  It has been a great trip thus far, and we haven't gotten overly annoyed with each other yet! 

Our hotel last night was quaint and located outside of the bustling village area, which gave us great views of the rock formations in all directions.  We had just fallen asleep and woke up with quite the scare hearing the fire alarm going off.  I woke up right away and called out to Kevin, then I stuck my head out the door to see if there was any activity... no one was leaving!  Kevin and I woke up both kids to get shoes on to vacate, and as we were headed out the door, the alarm stopped.  Kevin walked up to the office and found out it was just a random malfunction.  Thankfully we had an uneventful rest of the night, but it did go off again at breakfast time the next morning!   This was one time I was glad we were on the bottom floor! 

Breakfast at the hotel was awesome according to Panda, and the kids got moving with a little basketball on the court at our motel!

We packed up and drove down the road to explore a footbridge crossing the Colorado River.  Panda had the best time looking for geckos and lizards, and was successful in finding a lot.  

 

We went on down the road to Arches National Park where we had a timed ticket for 11 am, and after a stop at the visitor center, we drove the entire 18 mile road... talk about a scenic route!!  I think this was Kevin's favorite part of the trip so far... maybe mine too!  The rock formations were magnificent. Each one was different than the last, and they were ginormous.  They went on forever.  The whole family hiked a third of a mile to the Double Arch.  The size of this thing up close was awesome! I've never seen anything like it before.  We sat in the shade to rest and cool off before walking back. It seems wimpy that we can't handle a half mile hike, but it was so hot out there today.  It was desert-like with temps in the mid to high 90s, and the sun beating down.  I hiked another path to get to the Sand Dune Arch and it was the neatest hike!  No one else was up for more walking, so I went alone... it was so worth the sweat that dripped down my back! We stopped at a lot of overlooks, and our entire Arches experience ended up being three hours.  So amazing and rewarding! 

We ate a picnic lunch in the shade at the bottom of the mountain road by the visitor's center, and then took off to our most western point of the trip, Salt Lake City.  The drive here was long, and not as pretty as the drive through the mountains yesterday; much more barren...but it was still impressive with big rock formations.  As we drove from Moab to Salt Lake, the temperature kept creeping up and twice our car thermometer told us it was 100 degrees outside! 

Our evening ended with a yummy stop at the famous In N Out Burger, showers for everyone to wash off the sand and dirt from Arches, and a beautiful sunset from our top floor hotel room (Tru by Hilton).