Saturday morning, Rodney and I made our lists (imagine that) and went shopping for the last of the camping supplies and our groceries for the week. We got to the house to start packing and organizing. Then we were going to pick up lunch on our way out of town.
At the last minute, Dain, Sara, and the boys decided to go with us just for our Day 1. Arches is only 1.5 hours from Grand Junction and one of the things they wanted to do when they moved to Grand Junction was take advantage of the incredible outdoor opportunities available to them. However, they really hadn't had time to do any of that yet, so Arches was their first journey.
After a late lunch (we rendezvoused at McDonald's), we headed out.
The major north/south streets in Grand Junction are simply numbered: 22 street, 25 street, 24 1/2 street, etc. It turns out, those numbers are the distance from the Utah border. So it didn't take very long for us to feel like we were really off on our big adventure because very quickly, we crossed the Utah border.
We drove straight to Arches where Rodney purchased a National Park Pass for $80. It's good for a year, but we were going to more than break even with it in just five days. Arches: $10 a day. A quick stop at the Visitor Center to watch the orientation movie and ask a few questions (and take a potty break and play on the brass statues) and then we were off. Rodney and I squeezed into the family van and we drove to the major highlights of Arches. We drove past the Three Gossips (we decided they looked more like the Three Wisemen) and to The Windows area and Balanced Rock. We also drove to the Delicate Arch viewing area. It was all so impressive and we had beautiful weather.
After about 3 hours in the park, we all drove to Arch View Resort where Rodney and I had a cabin reserved and after a lot of futility and hard work, we successfully created some kind of dinner for the 6 of us to eat: Kabobs (off the stick after 20 minutes on a warm charcoal pile and then fried/heated in the frying pan on the Coleman stove) and rice (without butter....something to pick up at our next stop) with warmed up marshmallows for dessert. After dinner, Dain played guitar and we sang inside the cabin, then the family headed back to Grand Junction and the two of us called it a night, each of us with our iPhones in the dark (but plugged in for recharging...the joys of having a cabin)
