Arches and Moab

A couple weeks ago Isaac had a day off work so we decided to head town to Moab and Arches for a little vacation. 

 We headed down south right after church so Sophie could take a nap in the car.  I always feel so bad when kids heads flop around in their car seats, so I try to prop Sophie's head up with her stuffed animals.

We didn't make a reservation for a campsite because all the sites in Arches National Park were full, so we were just going to risk it on the BLM sites outside Moab.  We drove through a ton of campsites up the river, and they were all taken.  We had just turned around to go find a place to stay in Moab when we found the last two sites up the river.  It was a close call, but our site turned out to be really nice.

Sophie took off exploring as soon as we let her out of the car.  Isaac and I had to constantly take turns setting up camp and cooking while the other one chased Sophie around.  We were right by the river, so we taught her to throw rocks in.  Unfortunately that was all she wanted to do and always tried escaping to go throw "rocks wa-wa".

 We were a little worried about how Sophie would sleep in the tent with us, but she did great.  We wore her out so much throughout the day that she fell right asleep in her corner of the tent each night.  (But we do need a bigger tent because she was really crammed in a little corner.)

 Sophie and Dada eating breakfast one morning.  We decided to take her Bumbo and it worked great as a mini highchair so she couldn't escape during meal times.

 The first morning in Arches we hiked around the loop with North and South Window, Double Arch, etc.

 Sophie walked the whole way and did really well.  She probably walked about 1.5 miles by herself.  Most people that passed us gave us really funny looks because Sophie was the smallest kid out hiking, and I am definitely pregnant.

 Right before the trip we bought Sophie a baseball hat.  She wanted to wear it all the time, but it was a little big and kept falling in her eyes.  But she was so adorable wearing it.

 Then we decided to hike the path out to Landscape Arch.  We decided to put Sophie in the backpack for this part of the hike, but she wanted to get out and "walk" the whole time.  Isaac had to keep her distracted by running away from the Mama monster and spinning down the trail just to keep her happy in the pack.

 We had to get a picture with Sophie and Landscape Arch in case it falls down sometime soon.  We had a picnic lunch in Arches and right as we were cleaning up it started raining.  We thought it would be a small storm that only lasted a few minutes, but it just kept coming.  Fortunately we had planned to go back to our camp for Sophie's nap and then into Moab to go swimming for the afternoon.  The pool we went to we indoors, so it was a perfect way to spend a rainy afternoon.  Sophie loved swimming.  She walked around the shallow end the whole time saying "swim, swim".  If we ever picked her up to take her in the deep end she would say "No! Swim, swim".  So apparently it didn't count as swimming if she wasn't walking herself.

Then we went out for pizza in Moab before heading back to camp to throw more rocks in the river before bed.

 The second day in Arches we decided to hike to Delicate Arch.  As we drove to the trail head, thunderstorms were definitely building.  We decided to risk the hike anyway.  Most people were heading back to the parking lot and gave us lots of funny looks as we were the only people still heading up the trail.  We made it about half way up the trail before the rain started.  We were just about to start up the steep slickrock portion that is completely exposed when lightening and thunder were really close to us.  So we decided to turn around and head back to the car.  We considered waiting it out somewhere, but the rain lasted so long the day before we didn't think it would be a short wait.  As soon as we got back to the parking lot the rain cleared up and the sky looked beautiful.  We were bummed we didn't make it to Delicate Arch, but we didn't have time for a second try.  So instead we just went to the Delicate Arch lookout point instead.  It's not nearly as good of a view, but we'll have to try again another time.

We had a great mini vacation as a little family and will definitely be doing more camping trips in the future.