Monday, June 29 (Day 10)

        Arches National Park

       We entered the town of Moab, Utah, last night around 9:00 p.m. and had decided on the

way here that we would stay in this inn, La Quinta Inn, for two nights and take a break from driving. At the pool we met a family who started tell us about the fun they had had white water rafting in the Colorado River while they were here, so we decided to stay here long enough to go rafting.

 I called the rafting company and made plans to go rafting tomorrow at 8:15 a.m.  After sleeping in, we spent this morning swimming and reading by the outdoor pool. Jerry got Subway sandwiches for lunch. Then we decided to go to Arches National Park and drive through, because from the map it looked like you could just drive around the park and see the arches.

We first stopped at the visitor's center and watched two films about the formation of the arches. Molly enjoying speaking to an artist who was being featured there. I spoke to one of the rangers and found out that you had to walk a short distance to some of the arches to get the best view. We started driving around the park and the temperature in the van registered at 99 degrees, and realized that we didn't bring any water bottles at all. We took our girls into the

desert without any water! And since we were thinking that we weren't actually walking, we hadn't worn the best walking shoes either.

We walked to the first arch viewpoint and the complaining began. Brooke had hurt her big toe that morning at the pool and the bandage kept coming off. We quickly looked, took a few

pictures and headed back to the air-conditioned van. We drove past a few other arches and then got to the Delicate Arch, which the video at the visitor's center said was only about 6 feet thick at the top of the arch now and probably wouldn't last much longer, so we had to see it. There were two trails to the view of this arch. We took the shorter one, which was only about 1/4 of a mile. After looking at that view, we thought it was beautiful and wondered if we could take the longer trail to the other view of the Delicate Arch. It was hot and we were thirsty, but we thought that we would try it.

Well, it was uphill the entire way, and because of the elevation, we were sucking air by the time we got to the top. On the way up, I believe that my words were something like, 

"This better be flipping gorgeous!" We were blaming each other for whose idea it was to do this. We were complaining that we were hot, tired and thirsty. It was a great time!

Again, we took some pictures, and headed back to the van. Luckily, in the van we did have some gum, so that helped until we got back to the hotel.

We stopped at a grocery store on the way back to the hotel, and got some fresh fruit and drinks. We sat by the pool and enjoyed our snack. We headed to bed as early as we could, because we had to get up early for white water rafting!

Today we learned a couple of valuable lessons: 

1) Always take a water bottle when going out in the desert, even if you think you're only driving,

2) Always wear walking shoes when going into a national park, and

3) Realize that there will never be a total day of rest when you're traveling with Jerry Donald!