It very quickly became custom for us to take a photo of the boys at every park sign we came across. Here they are altogether but Capitol Reef is a bit of a cheat because we only really went across the top of that!
Park Signs
Tale of Two Cities
After the hiking and swimming of the previous day we had a little sleep in until just before 8am. With most of the morning and early afternoon likely to be spent in the car, we got up and went for a nice cooked breakfast in the main lodge. With stomachs full we went back to our lodge, packed our bags and loaded up the cars.
With the Lego movie playing in the back we back the four hour trip back to Salt Lake City. It was a reasonably uneventful drive up – no scary roads on this route which Tracy was happy about. We arrived at the Hotel Monaco just after 2pm and checked in. As this was a Kimpton Hotel we get to have a goldfish pet for the duration of our stay. The boys were also given a small cuddly bear each, which as you can imagine more than made Toby’s day!
Once we’d unpacked we got back in the car and drove 30 minutes up into the hills behind Salt Lake to the mountain ski resort of Park City. This was the main area for the Winter Olympics which were held in Utah in 2002. We went to the historic center and had a late lunch/early dinner because the boys were absolutely starving!
After lunch we went for a stroll up and down Main Street – it looked like a town that had a lot of money sloshing about in it. Next stop, despite lots of Toby protests was a chair lift ride up one of the mountains. Tracy and Harry went on the first chairlift and Toby and I followed in the next. The ride gave me the heebee-jeebees to begin with but as we were never too far off the ground my fears passed!
It was an interesting ride up, mainly spotting all the things that had been thrown from the chair lifts like bras, knickers, necklaces that were all hanging from the tree tops! The ride was worth it though because the view on the way back down was quite something. Once we had our feet back on terra ferma it was time for one last trip in the car for the day as we went back to Salt Lake City and our hotel.
On the way back Toby decided to showcase his song writing and singing skills by repeatedly singing the following beautiful little ditty…
“When I was a baby,
I was so cute,
Then Harry came and trod on me,
And now I’m so ugly”
After singing this about ten times he started work on the second verse, which went a little something like this …
“When I was a baby
I was so perfect…”
At this point he was told to shut up and after a little bit of back and forth he did!
Before long we were back in our hotel where Stanley the goldfish was waiting for us. He went a bit bonkers to begin with, swimming round like a crazy fish but he soon settled and enjoyed the attention from the boys.
A relaxing evening followed until at about 10:30pm it was lights out and time for our last sleep in Utah. So sad, time clearly flies when you’re having fun!
Arches National Park
After arriving at the Lodge the day before we had spent the afternoon by, and in the pool and enjoying a meal at the restaurant. The next morning, well fed and refreshed we woke and left to hit Arches National Park just after 9am.
On arrival at the park we took the customary picture of two naughty boys posing at the side of the sign and then drove on to the visitor center. We bought our Arches National Park sticker, checked the maps and then set off on a short drive up to Balancing Rock. There were no shuttle options at this Park so it was a bit busier with cars and around car parks. Having taken a few pictures of the Balancing Rock we decided to drive up to the far end of the Park to Devils Garden. This is where we intended to take our short hike of the day and we thought it best to get to the end of the Park before everyone else made it up there and so we did our hike before it got too hot – although it was already pretty warm.
We decided on the shorter hike that took us to Landscape Arch, Tunnel Arch and Pine Arch. The route to all three was pretty well paved, with just a few inclines and declines to navigate. Landscape Arch was pretty impressive. You used to be able to walk up to and under it however a few years ago a big chunk of it fell down as people were up there and they decided to close that part of the trail. No-one was hurt when it collapsed but they did have a picture taken by a hiker who was there at the time and it was pretty impressive. The bit that fell is the rubble to the right hand side of the arch:
After Landscape, we doubled back on ourselves and went to Tunnel and Pine Arches. It was starting to get pretty hot now so frequent drink breaks in whatever shade we could find were taken. Just down the road from Devils Garden was Skyline Arch which we stopped at for another short walk – not too much complaining from Toby either! This was another arch that had fairly recently had a large boulder fall out of it! It’s clearly a bit dodgy round here!
Our next, and final stop was at Delicate Arch. After a brief assessment of the pit toilets – they didn’t pass the Tracy test – we walked along to the lower viewpoint. The best views are up the other side of the Arch from where the viewpoint is looking back to it however it was now very hot and the hike up had absolutely no shade and was across smooth rocks so we decided against it. Also slightly off putting was the fact that once you got there, there would be lots of people all around! Bloody people, didn’t they know they were ruining my photos?
So we went back to the car and via a few photo stops, including the petrified sand dunes, plus our first experience of a wild fire (although it was just a little one so hopefully it was contained nice and easily) before making our way to Moab for a spot of lunch. We managed to work out our list of favourite National Parks and the final list looked like this:
Zion National Park (Tracy’s favourite)
Bryce National Park (Harry’s and my favourite)
Goblin Valley State Park (Toby’s favourite)
Arches National Park (no-ones favourite)
The order of the list seemed to suggest that our holiday got progressively worse but that’s not actually the case. Arches was the one that everyone thought would be the best but maybe we’d built it up to be too much. It was still quite something to see but it is probably more of a park for hikers whereas the others could be witnessed with short hikes and had more awesomeness to them!
With lunch taken care of we did a spot of shopping and I bought the pair of shoes that I had been needing all holiday – just about better late than never because they would at least make for a comfy couple of days (my previous sandals had already ruined my heels!).
Next and final stop was back to the lodge and into the pool for another afternoon of playing and relaxing and watching the US lose to Belgium via refreshing a twitter feed every 30 seconds!
The evening was spent drinking a couple of bottles of wine made locally at the Lodge. It was a beautiful last evening sat on the deck, listening to the river, watching the stars and seeing my first two shooting stars. I’d never realised just how fast shooting stars shoot! Apparently you’re meant to make a wish when you see them but I’d forgotten that and missed out on two glorious opportunities!
