This is the 4th (and final) part in a series about our family's spring vacation this year to southern Utah.
After we finished walking, hiking, and seeing the sights in Arches National Park on Monday March 24, it was late in the afternoon. After we left the park, we drove across the highway from the park entrance to a giant hillside of red sand. The boys had eyed it the previous day when we drove into Moab, and again that morning when we were on our way into Arches. We parked the car and the boys immediately set out to climb to the top.
As soon as they made it to the top, they ran and rolled all the way down and immediately climbed back up, but this time stopping on a rock halfway to the top.
After doing it once, they just couldn't stop jumping off that rock over and over again! Free entertainment!
Then they tried to do simultaneous jumping off of multiple rocks...
Josh and I loved watching them play in the sand. They were so free, and they had so much fun!!! There was a whole bunch of other families and kids there too, and it was so relaxing for Josh and I to sit after a long day of hiking, and watch all the people having a good time.
The boys freely played in the hot, red sand for two hours!
They didn't even mind that they were COMPLETELY covered in sand! I just love these photos of my super happy, very dirty boys!
It was dinner time when we left the giant red sand hill, but it had been so hot outside that we weren't even hungry for food. We all wanted something cold instead, so we stopped at a cute diner on Main Street of Moab (dirty, sandy, and all!) and ate delicious, refreshing large ice cream cones!
We went back to the hotel after ice cream and took showers and changed our clothes to get all the sand off of us. Then we decided to go for a drive. We headed south to go see the landmark "Hole in the Rock".
Unfortunately, it was about 7:30 when we got there, and the place had closed at 7:00. Bummer! I've never even heard of this place (I just saw it on the map), but it looks like a fun spot!
So we drove back to the hotel, soaked in the hot tub, watched TV, and went to bed for our last night of vacation. The next morning, we left the hotel for a long day of driving. We had decided when we made our vacation plans to spend day 4 of the trip driving the ENTIRE way home--which is about 12 hours. Before we had gone on vacation, I had rented several older movies that the kids hadn't seen for the long sections of driving, which ended up being such a great idea! The boys watched 3 movies that day alone--including "Forrest Gump" and some Adam Sandler movies. We stopped to eat lunch at "In and Out Burger" in American Fork--and I ended up giving Josh wrong directions AGAIN (that was the LAST time on our trip!). We got off the exit in Pleasant Grove, then got back onto the freeway for American Fork instead!! Lunch was good; the boys had never been to that restaurant before. After driving for so long in the car, we decided to stop and let the boys move their legs at this place in Ogden:
Josh has ALWAYS wanted to go to Smith & Edwards Surplus Store since the time we lived in Tremonton when we were first married, but he's never been! It was a good break from the monotonous driving! It was a fun store for him and the boys to walk around in--which we did for over an hour. He let them all pick one item that he'd get for them. The boys played some car bingo for a while from Salt Lake to about Malad, Idaho, then it was back to watching movies until we got home to Salmon that night.
Our 4-day trip to Southern Utah had been short, but so good. We got to visit my Grandma, stay at my parents' house, explore a State & National Park, play in the sand, and spend a lot of time basking in the warm sunlight. Overall, it was a wonderful family vacation!
1 comment:
What a fun trip. We've done all of those things on family trips and it is about time to do it again.
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