Went to Moab/Arches this past weekend

Alene, Caiden, and I went camping in a campground about 6 miles outside Moab, right along a muddy river (the Colorado). We spent the good portion of the trip hiking through Arches National Park. We had never been there before, so we were obviously blown away.

Before I met Alene, I never found much of a fascination with the desert, red rocks, red sand, etc. However, after actually spending time there with her, I'm in love. I think it's a very beautiful part of God's creation of this earth. Many will think of it as nothing more than a hot, barren wasteland, however Alene said her feelings on it perfectly to me about it being lonely yet romantic in many ways (I'm paraphrasing and can't remember the exact words, but they still meant a lot to me). I love how she sees the beauty and good in EVERYTHING.

So we hiked to every major arch in the canyon. That was quite a feat. I was most proud of Caiden doing every one of the hikes. We did a 7 mile hike at the end of the canyon (where we saw 5-6 different arches). We did the 1.5 mile hike up to the "delicate arch", which is the famous arch you will see on every brochure and Utah license plate. It's very touristy (there had to be at least 30 people up there and you could see a constant line of people coming and going up the entire trail from the trailhead), but it was still worth the trip. It's pretty scary too as the arch itself is right against a huge cliff. Next time I do that hike, I want to go there at sunset. Again, it will be very touristy, but I hear it's amazing. The elevation change to that area is quite high as well. When we were up there, it got VERY windy.

Some other arches we visited were not hard of a hike at all. Double Arch was amazing (where they filmed the last Indiana Jones movie; the river phoenix scene at the beginning). That place was beautiful and the echo you can create in the two arches, which come together, was cool too. Caiden was quite proud of himself because he hiked all the way to the top of the bottom ledge of the arch. The day before we hiked to double-O arch and we climbed up to the bottom arch, however, coming down we had some problems with him being scared. He ended up slipping about 5 feet on the rock coming down and scratching his back. I felt so bad for him, but I think it helped him knowing he could make it up some tough climbing. I want him to learn stuff like that.

The trip was great though. The purpose was for my sister in-laws husbands (Bill's) Birthday, which they usually do somewhere where it's warmer in Utah (the central and southern area is typically warmer) to camp and celebrate his birthday. It was fun just hanging out around the fire at the end of the evening. They get pretty drunk and get even funnier. One funny moment was when we returned, Bill (who was not drunk yet), built himself a shower out of some tarp and a huge water jug hanging from a tree. He was so proud of it and wanted everyone else to do it, but we all bailed. He was then upset, but it was hilarious.

I'm so glad to have these opportunities to camp often. I'm glad that Alene loves doing it becuase it motivates me. I've always wanted to camp for the first 5 years I lived in Utah, but I never had a ton of motivation because I couldn't find people that wanted to go. Alene would rather camp every weekend, than stay at home, so that is good. I love that Caiden gets a chance to go out and experience these things too. I want him to have the best of memories, as I do with all my future children. Alene is an awesome mom and kicks butt on all the hikes.

Oh yeah, we also bought a National Parks pass, which is good for a year. This gives us motivation to get out and see places like Zions, Canyonlands, possibly Yellowstone, and Glacier (if it all goes to plan, but who knows?) Still, we will get our money's worth out of it.

I'll post pictures of the trip later (we let my brother borrow our digital camera, so we took some pictures with our 35mm camera and some that we will have Bill send to us from his digital camera).

Now it's back to getting the kitchen finished. To be honest, I was getting kind of tired of working on it, so I stalled a bit on finishing the counter tops. Now that I'm back, I've got some more motivation to finish them. I hope to have them mostly done before Alene gets back from her trip to Dallas this week.