National Park #20, canceled March 23, 2021
After exploring Canyonlands Needles district on our way in from Mesa Verde, we entered Arches National Park with a good amount of daylight left to set up camp comfortably. Our destination was Devils Garden Campground, and getting the tent put together was much quicker than at Grand Canyon (about 30 minutes). It helped that the ground was much softer there, and everyone was fresh on what needed to be done. Some deer even stopped by to say hello right next to our site! Since we had light tonight, the kids stayed up a bit and played Uno while Jeremy and I read on our Kindles.
We woke up in the morning not quite as cold as we did in the Grand Canyon. After hot chocolate and apple cider, we left camp for the trail to Delicate Arch. I was grateful to find parking, and we set off on probably the most difficult trail of this particularly road trip. It was a mile-and-a-half to the arch, mostly uphill. The hardest part was a climb up a long stretch of slickrock. But we made it, and even got some group pictures underneath the arch. The hike back down was much easier!
Then we explored the Windows section of the park. The kids found a cool cave next to Double Arch, but it involved a tough climb. It was pretty funny, after all the complaining they did about the climb to Delicate Arch, they chose climbing to the top of the cave to do of their own accord shortly afterwards! They took a few breaks, but ultimately all of them made it to the top!
Our last stop before the gift shop and visitor center was Balanced Rock. We took lots of fun pictures of the kids holding it up, pushing it down, or balancing it on their head.
We stopped at a store in Moab to get s’mores supplies since we didn’t have to set up camp again tonight. Then we had dinner at Denny’s (boy, was that a hit!). We were back at camp a couple of hours before sunset, and the kids roamed around the rocks outside our site while Jeremy and I took a short stroll to Skyline Arch at the far end of the campground, then got the campfire going. It was nice to have a quiet evening with nothing much to do.
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